“We will continue to protect the French both on the risk of shortage and prices”, assured Europe 1 Aurore Bergé, questioned on the records reached in France by wholesale electricity prices. The purchasing power law voted in early August “includes provisions which allow, until the end of the year, to protect the French”.
The president of the Renaissance deputies (ex LREM) Aurore Bergé ruled out on Friday that the French energy bill would increase “by 35 to 50%” in the face of soaring electricity prices. “We will continue to protect the French both on the risk of shortage and prices”, assured Europe 1 Aurore Bergé, questioned by Jeanne Baron on the records reached in France by wholesale electricity prices. On the one hand, the purchasing power law voted in early August “includes provisions which allow, until the end of the year, to protect the French”, she recalled.
“And we will have another budget debate” in the fall where “the question of energy, both the risk of shortage and prices, will obviously be raised to continue to protect the French and in no case have a bill that would increase tomorrow by 35 to 50% as is the case in other countries that are neighbors of France”, she added.
“We have made efforts to ensure that this bill does not increase”
“We have made efforts so that this bill does not increase in the same dimensions as everywhere else in the other countries of the world”, added the deputy. Wholesale electricity prices for 2023 topped 1,000 euros per megawatt hour (MWh) on Friday, from around 85 euros a year ago.
Several causes are at the origin of the explosion of prices, in particular the drying up of Russian gas flows to Europe since the start of the war in Ukraine while many thermal power stations use gas to generate electricity. In France, only 24 of EDF’s 56 nuclear reactors are operating at the moment, in particular due to a corrosion problem, which is reducing French electricity production to a historically low level, and mechanically driving up prices.