What will be the electricity consumption in France in 2035 and, consequently, what means of production should be deployed? A year and a half after the publication, at the end of October 2021, of “Energy Futures 2050”, a vast modeling work for 2050, the manager Electricity transmission network (RTE) is updating its forecasts for the next decade. .
The chairman of its executive board, Xavier Piechaczyk, comments, on Wednesday June 7, on the main conclusions of the consultation carried out with all the players in the sector to prepare these new scenarios – the “forecast report” – which will be detailed in September.
Elements that will also feed the parliamentary debate, expected in the fall, on the next Energy-Climate programming law.
Why do you predict a sharp increase in electricity consumption by 2035?
New European ambitions, whether in terms of climate or reindustrialisation, require accelerated electrification. What has changed since the publication of “Energy Futures” is in particular “Fit for 55”, a European plan which imposes a very ambitious decarbonization objective [adopté en 2022, il prévoit de réduire les émissions de gaz à effet de serre de 55 % d’ici à 2030 par rapport à 1990].
These new ambitions imply a marked increase in electricity consumption, which corresponds to the maximum assumption described in our 2021 publications. Consumption could thus be between 580 and 640 terawatt hours. [TWh] in 2035 [alors que le scénario médian des « Futurs énergétiques » prévoyait une consommation de 650 TWh en 2050].
To what extent has the war in Ukraine changed the situation?
The conflict has reinforced the interest in getting out of fossil fuels in a structural way and getting out of sources of supply that pose geopolitical problems. He underlined the need to reindustrialize faster to master our own value chains. The war in Ukraine has also changed economic parameters, since it has had an impact on the price of gas and the way the electricity system works.
Are there other influencing factors at the national level?
Our trajectory is based on the sum of the needs that were reported to us, sector by sector, during the consultation. Here too, things have changed. In “Energy Futures”, for example, there is very little electricity used to produce synthetic fuels for aviation.. At the time, industrialists in the sector did not seem to have made as much progress on their low-carbon transition. This time, they responded en masse to our consultation and came up with their trajectory, which provides for the production of synthetic fuels.
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