A few days after Emmanuel Macron’s speech on France’s energy strategy, our energy barometer confirms his trends with gas stocks continuing to rise and a stagnant number of reactor shutdowns.
French energy news has been particularly rhythmic in recent days. Last Thursday, Emmanuel Macron inaugurated France’s first offshore wind farm in Saint-Nazaire before giving a speech to outline the country’s energy policy for the coming years, including the relaunch of nuclear power. The President of the Republic took advantage of this speech to also outline the guidelines of the renewable energy acceleration bill presented this Monday to the Council of Ministers.
Earlier in the day, Elisabeth Borne is Apolline de Malherbe’s guest on RMC and BFMTV’s “Face to Face” where she will speak in particular on issues related to energy. This is therefore an opportunity to take a fresh look at the state of France’s energy reserves through the dedicated BFM Business barometer for this week of September 26.
An identical distribution between maintenance and the phenomenon of corrosion.
The situation is stalling on the nuclear reactor side, while EDF is engaged in a race against time to restart as much infrastructure as possible before winter. Compared to last week, the number of stopped nuclear reactors remains at 27 with the same distribution between maintenance (12) and repair due to stress corrosion cracking (15). In detail, one of them at Gravelines should be available again during the day while another at the Saint-Laurent-des-Eaux power plant will be available on Wednesday.
The activity of the rest of the nuclear reactors will gradually restart until mid-February according to EDF forecasts. Nine will reopen over the next month and 17 of them will remain closed as of November 1.
Water dams approaching their traditional level
As for the water level in the reservoirs, it remains at 63% for the fifth consecutive week since the launch of the BFM Business energy barometer. Despite this static, it is close to the usual occupancy level at this time of year, which falls to 74% compared to almost 80% a month ago.
Like last week, the change to notice is on the side of gas stocks that continue to rise towards the technical maximum of 94 to 95%. On the other hand, weekly evolutions are now less significant as bookings have only increased their fill rate by a few percentage points over two weeks versus an additional two points previously.