2023-06-11 15:59:00
Will there be enough electricity for everyone? In France, the consumption of electrons will increase much faster than expected so far to meet European climate objectives and the challenges of reindustrialisation, estimates the manager of the high voltage network RTE in a forecast report.
This acceleration in consumption will force the country to double its production of renewable energies by 2035, underlines RTE in this analysis intended to inform the public debate before the development of the country’s energy strategy by the government.
The manager expects a sharp increase in annual electricity consumption, between 580 and 640 terawatt hours in 2035, while in 2021 he was still counting on consumption of 540 TWh in an average so-called reference scenario, and 585 TWh in the event of “deep reindustrialisation” of the country.
In 2022, the French consumed 460 TWh of electricity.
The new forecasts incorporate the upheavals that have taken place over the past two years: the publication of the European “Fit for 55” program which reinforces the requirements for reducing CO2 emissions in European countries (-55% compared to 1990 instead of -40% previously) and the war in Ukraine.
This has highlighted a need for sovereignty and the relocation of industry to be carried out in tandem with the decarbonization of society. Clearly, an urgent and massive need for electricity in factories to replace CO2-emitting gas and coal, while consumers also need more electricity in their daily lives, such as for electric cars.
As a result, the growth in electricity consumption in France should exceed 10 TWh per year during the decade 2025-2035, a rate which “has not been reached since the 1980s”, estimates RTE in its report.
This rhythm “highlights the scale of the challenge facing the electricity system”, insists RTE. We will have to quickly produce more low-carbon electricity, even though the first of the new nuclear reactors announced by the government will not see the light of day before 2035 at the earliest.
“Achieving low-carbon electricity production by 2035 of at least 600 TWh, and if possible 650 TWh or even more so as to cover the upper end of the range of electricity consumption prospects, seems ambitious (…) but doable” , nevertheless reassures RTE.
This will in fact lead the country to produce “more renewables, and faster in the coming years”, summarized Xavier Piechaczyk, president of RTE during a press conference.
With the objective of reaching at least 250 TWh by 2035, compared to around 120 TWh today. This is a doubling of current production, but it is still lower than what Germany does, underlines Mr. Piechaczyk.
“There is an urgent need to deploy onshore wind and solar power, which can be implemented in a short time,” added Thomas Veyrenc, executive director of RTE. According to him, “aiming for less than 250 Twh of renewables in 2035 would be taking a big risk on the (climate) trajectory in the medium term”.
The precise production objectives, and their costs, will be detailed later in the RTE report scheduled “in September”.
Between 2030 and 2025, offshore wind power could be added “provided that France manages to allocate parks on a massive scale between today and 2025”. Then, after 2035, the renewal of the nuclear fleet by EPR2 “can make it possible to continue the growth of the production” of low carbon electricity, completes RTE.
By 2035, RTE’s “prudent” forecast for average annual nuclear production is a total of 360 TWh, which could go up to 400 TWh thanks to actions to “maximize” the current fleet.
But the room for maneuver is diminishing. To complete the energy equation, i.e. to succeed in both decarbonization and industrialization, “we need efficiency, sobriety, nuclear production as available as possible and a lot of additional renewable energies” , according to Mr. Piechaczyk.
Sobriety, and any form of energy saving, presented as an option in 2021, “is no longer an option”, he adds, “that’s what’s new”.
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