Tribune. Since the beginning of September, the price of electricity has reached new heights on the European markets. This situation, even if it is occasional, in fact hides a structural risk of an uncontrolled rise in the price of electricity. However, it is possible to avoid such a situation and the disastrous economic consequences that it would generate. But this requires greatly accelerating the transition to renewable energies.
The price of electricity is fixed, on the European markets, by the principle of “marginal cost”, which means that we take as reference price the price of the last production capacity that we must call to balance the network . As a rule, thermal power plants are called last and therefore set the market price. At the moment, they are impacted by the high cost of the resource (coal or gas) and, to a lesser extent, by the price per tonne of CO2. This is what leads to seeing such a high price of electricity.
If these thermal power stations are called by the network, it is because the power stations with the lower production cost (solar, wind, nuclear, hydraulic) were not sufficient to cover the level of demand. Beyond one-off phenomena, for example linked to weather conditions or the resumption of post-containment economic activity, we know that the demand for electricity is bound to increase structurally in the years to come, in particular due to the electrification of our industry and transport.
Ambitious goals
Faced with this increase, it is first of all necessary to set ambitious objectives for optimizing demand, ie energy efficiency. Concretely, this is to encourage consumers to consume less, better (carbon-free energy) and at the right time (off-peak hours).
The development of new production capacities is also necessary to replace fossil fuels and renew all or part of nuclear power at the end of its life. This development must call for a genuine diversification strategy. The three objectives of such a strategy must be low-carbon production, control of long-term production costs and energy autonomy. These three objectives can also be linked: it is by producing carbon-free electricity locally that we will optimize long-term costs and offer a competitive advantage to our industry.
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