This is undoubtedly the beginnings of the results of the structural reform of the organization of the European electricity market adopted in 2024, and driven by France since 2022. The French electricity giant EDF announced Thursday, March 6, in a press releasethat it was going to offer nuclear electricity purchase contracts “through an auction mechanism on a European scale” in the coming months.
Since the end of 2023 and an agreement concluded with the State, EDF has launched a new commercial policy of proposing medium and long -term electricity contracts for large professional customers. Following this agreement, the electrician started bilateral negotiations with electro-intensive manufacturers, that is to say a large consumers of electricity, such as metallurgy, glassware or chemistry, in order to sign long-term partnership contracts backed by French historic nuclear park.
These contracts, known as “nuclear production allocation contracts” (CAPN), thus allow partners to benefit from a share of the effective production of the nuclear fleet with a share of the costs and associated risks. According to EDF, “partners have access to a low carbon electricity supply for 10 or 15 years in France, at prices reflecting the costs of the nuclear fleet and therefore decorbed from the prices of the wholesale markets”.
Finance essential investments
The objective? This policy would provide customers with a wider choice of low and long -term low -carbon electricity contracts in the face of price volatility on wholesale markets. In addition, it would allow EDF to finance the investments essential for the energy transition and to limit its exposure to wholesale markets. These CAPN contracts, an EDF commercial innovation, have been designed to take over from the current regulation system (known as Arenh) which allows large manufacturers and alternative suppliers to benefit from a nuclear electricity rate at broken prices – a mechanism that dies on December 31, 2025.
Concretely, in this approach, EDF aims at two types of customers. On the one hand, significant companies from all sectors with electricity needs greater than 7 GWh/year, in France or Europe; On the other hand, “suppliers or producers” of electricity present physically in France, to supply their French or European customers. EDF will offer a volume of 10 TWh per year for delivery from January 1, 2026 through these so -called ascending auctions announced in June. According to information from the newspaper Les Echosthese auctions would be open both to these chemists and other stewers but also to other electricity, Engie or Totalenergies suppliers who demanded equal treatment to be able to continue to compete with EDF.
Questioned by AFP, the Ministry of Energy, however, stressed that the 2023 EDF agreement aimed “specifically to what EDF provides electro-intensive industrial customers exposed to strong international competition”. “EDF only signed at this stage (with electro-intensifs, note) only a CAPN for a very low volume (less than 1 % of the objective). We are waiting in the coming days a balance sheet,” adds the ministry.