The environmental candidate for the presidential Yannick Jadot told AFP on Friday that the “wall of investments of nearly 100 billion” for the upgrading of nuclear reactors contributes to the situation of “near bankruptcy” of EDF, which has just announced its bailout by the State. Yannick Jadot repeated that his program provided for a renationalisation of EDF, already almost 84% owned by the State, “to extract it from this pressure from shareholders, but above all to redirect EDF’s activity towards the transition energy, with less nuclear and more renewable energy”.
EDF, “a worrying situation”
“EDF is in an extremely worrying situation, its nuclear obsession leads it to be in difficulty with its debt”, he judged, adding that “the latest decisions of the State on the capping of electricity prices put her in even more trouble.” “And we can clearly see that including EDF cannot even maintain these reactors, including the most recent ones, for lack of investment and maintenance capacities. So for ecologists, it is better to renationalise EDF today” , he continued. He pointed out that EDF’s debt was “more than 40 billion” euros, with “a wall of investments of nearly 100 billion to upgrade our nuclear reactors”.
According to him, “as EDF is particularly committed (in the project to build two EPR power plants at Hinkley Point in England) and on other projects, EDF can no longer even manage to maintain these power plants and EDF is in a situation near-bankruptcy”, requiring the bailout of the state.
Profit multiplied by eight in 2021
For him, the “major European competitors who have rather chosen the transition towards efficiency, renewable (…) are doing much better than EDF”. The solution therefore passes, according to Yannick Jadot, by “renationalization, both to regain complete control of our dams, to be able to borrow at a lower price, but above all to make EDF an armed wing of the energy transition”.
EDF, which posts a net profit multiplied by eight for 2021, announced on Friday an “action plan”, with a bailout of the State of 2.1 billion euros while the year 2022 promises to be difficult with problems in nuclear production and recent government measures to limit the rise in electricity bills.