The French power regulator has proposed doubling the electrical energy value relevant to 80% of households, however the authorities is unlikely to take heed because it has already prolonged the tariff defend till the tip of 2023.
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France’s power regulator, CRE, has proposed growing the retail value of electrical energy by 108% from February – a €176 enhance in comparison with now.
The explanation for the proposed enhance is the exceptionally excessive value of electrical energy on the wholesale market, which averaged €218 per megawatt-hour (MWh) over the previous two years, and reached a €369/MWh common in 2022.
Nevertheless, the French authorities is unlikely to observe the CRE’s recommendation. Earlier, the chief had certainly already extended the tariff defend it applied final yr.
In consequence, the regulated value of electrical energy for customers will solely enhance by 15% as of 1 January.
“The CRE has calculated that and not using a tariff defend limiting the rise to +15%, the electrical energy payments of households and ‘small professionals’ who’ve subscribed to the regulated tariff (EDF’s blue tariff) would have risen by +99.22%, not together with tax,” CRE’s president, Emmanuel Wargon, not too long ago mentioned on Twitter.
Not everybody’s in the identical boat
Not all French individuals are protected by the regulated electrical energy value, nonetheless.
The tariff applies solely to households, small native authorities, and micro-businesses that make lower than €2 million a yr with a subscription capability of 36 kilowatts or much less. People and firms consuming in Corsica and the abroad territories additionally profit from the scheme.
In the meantime, households heated with collective electrical energy are lined by a particular support replicating the tariff defend. Moreover, small and medium-sized companies, in addition to micro-businesses to which the tariff defend doesn’t apply, profit from a government-provided buffer.
The scenario can’t final ceaselessly
Nonetheless, the shields and buffers applied by the federal government for the reason that begin of the power disaster can’t be in place indefinitely and that in parliament, lawmakers are already taking a look at different options.
Some suggest reforming the EU electrical energy market by introducing stricter controls on hypothesis and returning to long-term contracts.
Others, notably on the left facet of the political aisle, wish to break free from any market logic and have regulated retail costs that may not be topic to circumstantial will increase making use of to everybody.
That is what Communist Senator Fabien Homosexual proposed in a decision rejected earlier this month.
Regulated electrical energy costs for customers have been elevated 14 instances up to now ten years, going from €0.167 per kilowatt hour in 2011 to €0.174/kWh at the moment, based on the draft invoice that was rejected by senators.
[Edited by Frédéric Simon and Alice Taylor]
