France’s net electricity exports to its neighbors have reached a record level in 2024, at 89 terawatt hours (TWh), a member of the management board of manager RTE said this Thursday on LinkedIn.
“The old record from 2002 is broken”
“Exceptional value”
“89 TWh (terawatt-hours, Editor’s note): this is the exceptional value of net electricity exports from France to its neighbors in 2024. The old record from 2002 is broken,” underlines Thomas Veyrenc, Director General Economy, Strategy and Finances of the manager of the French high voltage electricity network in his post on the professional social network.
This record, after a balance of 50.1 TWh in 2023, confirms the recovery of electricity production in France, in particular the nuclear production of EDF, penalized in recent years by numerous reactor maintenance operations linked to corrosion problems. In 2022, EDF’s nuclear production had fallen to 279 TWh, its lowest level in 30 years and France had also been a net importer of electricity for almost the entire year, a first in 42 years .
Nuclear, wind, solar
But since then, French nuclear power has regained color. EDF had increased its nuclear production forecasts for 2024 in September, before a further upward revision on December 11, increasing it from a range of 340-360 TWh to 358-364 TWh, not including the Flamanville EPR, connected to the network on December 21.
In addition to the “spectacular restoration of nuclear power in 2024”, “exceptional hydraulic production” and the “continued development of wind and solar power” have contributed to the rebound in French electricity production over the past year, underlines Thomas Veyrenc .
“Transfers in the use of fossil fuels towards electricity have not been initiated at the level required to deeply decarbonize”
“French electricity consumption remains low”
A record which was also made possible by the fact that “French electricity consumption remains low”, which is “more problematic”. “Transfers in the use of fossil fuels towards electricity have not been initiated at the level required to deeply decarbonize,” he notes.
French electricity exports in 2024 concerned all border countries, according to the RTE representative: Germany and Belgium (with a positive balance of 27.2 TWh), Italy (+ 22.3 TWh ), the United Kingdom (+ 21 TWh), Switzerland (+ 16.7 TWh) as well as Spain, to a lesser extent (+ 2.8 TWh).
France had already broken a one-day electricity export record on November 13. In 2002, the date of the previous annual record, the export balance stood at 76.9 TWh.
Swiss
