the State and EDF agree on a price “around 70 euros” per MWh – L’Express

“With this agreement, we have managed to find a vital balance between the competitiveness of our industry, visibility, stability for households and the development of EDF,” commented the minister.

The agreement therefore sets an average price level of around 70 euros per MWh for nuclear electricity, from 2026 and for 15 years. In this mechanism, any additional income earned by EDF in the event of price slippage on the market will be partly returned to consumers.

This agreement, promised Bruno Le Maire, will allow consumers “permanent protection” on electricity prices, businesses to preserve their “competitiveness assets”, and EDF to “guarantee the financing of its future investments, in particularly in new nuclear reactors.

“EDF is a nationalized company”, but “EDF must be profitable, we are not in the Soviet Union”, underlined the minister, who refused to see the group sell its electricity at “cut-off prices”.

This agreement is a continuation of an agreement on the reform of the European electricity market, “which aims to disconnect the price of electricity from the price of fossil fuels, particularly that of gas”, explained the minister. of the Energy Transition, Agnès Pannier-Runacher. Concretely, it lays the foundations for the future regulation of the price of electricity while the current mechanism, known as Arenh, which benefits individual consumers and industrial customers, ends at the end of 2025. For industrialists who buy their electricity two years ahead of schedule, there was an urgent need to find a new framework.

As this deadline approaches, Emmanuel Macron had also promised a resumption of “control of the price of electricity”.

Under the current mechanism, since 2012, EDF has been forced to sell part of its electricity at the discounted price of 42 euros per MWh to its competing alternative suppliers, who had to pass it on to end consumers’ bills. However, EDF has always considered that this system deprived it of revenue, its former CEO Jean-Bernard Lévy even describing it as “poison”. While part of nuclear production was exposed to market volatility, the new framework will cover all of this production.

Concretely, this new organization will be based on “a price capping mechanism to protect consumers”, which will be activated “as soon as EDF prices are significantly higher than the average equilibrium price of 70 euros per MWh”, explained the Minister of Energy Transition. As soon as the average price exceeds 78 to 80 euros per MWh, 50% of the additional income earned by EDF beyond this threshold will go “to the community”, therefore to consumers. And if the average price exceeds 110 euros, the capture of this excess income will be 90%.

In fact, however, this does not mean that consumers will actually pay 70 euros: EDF will be encouraged to move towards this objective via its commercial policy, with in particular “efforts” towards industrial customers who are large consumers of energy, indicates – a government source says, “We will thus be equipped with an anti-crisis mechanism to avoid an explosion in prices similar to that of 2022”, summarized Agnès Pannier-Runacher.

“We want to remain one of the most competitive nations in Europe for electricity prices, we will remain so,” added Bruno Le Maire, emphasizing the advantage of the French nuclear fleet.

The regulated electricity sales tariff system for individuals and small businesses will be “extended” to all Very Small Businesses (VSEs), the Minister of the Economy and Finance announced on Tuesday.

“All companies with fewer than ten people and less than 2 million euros in turnover will be entitled to a regulated rate, regardless of their level of electricity consumption. There will therefore no longer be a threshold of 36 kilovolt-amperes (kVA),” the minister said. Until now, the most energy-consuming VSEs – such as in the artisan bakers sector – which were supplied with a power greater than 36 kVA did not have access to this tariff.