In the middle of COP29, the international climate conference which opened on Monday in Baku (Azerbaijan), this is a troubling signal: coal has made its return to the French mix. The Emile Huchet power station in Saint-Avold (Moselle), one of the two sites in France which converts fossil rock into electricity, resumed service on Tuesday. And continues to operate this Wednesday, despite the catastrophic carbon footprint of this energy source.
However, the electricity network manager, RTE, is categorical: France has enough electricity to operate without this installation, the organization told the press. And for good reason: the equation has been reversed since the crisis of 2022 and 2023. A net importer at the time, the country is now “ in a position to beat its net export record » of power throughout the year, and there is no risk – barring exceptional events – of running out of electricity this winter.
Better yet, this electricity emits few greenhouse gases, thanks to a nuclear fleet. performant “, dams “ filled », a satisfactory level of wind and solar power but also a drop in consumption, argued RTE. In these almost optimal conditions, why restart a polluting power plant, at the risk of driving up prices and degrading the carbon footprint?
Price surge
In reality, this production is used for export, since France massively sends electricity to Germany, Switzerland, Italy, Belgium and even Great Britain. RTE does not organize these exchanges, even if it is responsible for ensuring a balance between supply and demand at all times: this is a “classic” phenomenon linked to the functioning of the market. In recent days, electricity prices have been rising in Europe on spot markets, where electricity is bought and sold in bulk between electricity producers (generators/power plants) and electricity suppliers (retailers/utilities public).
“The Germans, and more generally the countries of Northern Europe, have been facing for around ten days a lack of wind to operate their wind turbines, coupled with a cold snap which is driving demand up. France does not have this problem thanks to nuclear and hydraulic power, and therefore exports massively to these regions,” economist Jacques Percebois told La Tribune.
Result: on Epex, the main exchange on the Old Continent, where operators indicate the prices and volumes they wish to exchange, the megawatt hour (MWh) rose to 317 euros in Germany at 5 p.m. this Tuesday, and remains since above 100 euros per MWh.
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A question of profitability
At such a price, it becomes profitable for coal-fired power plants like that of Saint-Avold to get started, selling their production on the markets. “ To produce electricity, their operator must cover its variable costs, that is to say those of fuel and CO2, as well as its start-up costs. There is only interest when it becomes profitable, therefore when prices are high », continues Jacques Percebois.
This strategy also allows the operator to show that their installation is working as winter approaches. The power plant generally restarts during this season, for around twenty days per year, when the cold sets in and the system is under tension. This restart also allows GazelEnergie to offer itself a little reprieve, while Emile Huchet was initially due to close at the start of 2022, before being called upon a year later, in January 2023, to secure the country's supply during peak periods. consumption.
“Epiphenomenon”
Unlike other European countries such as Germany or Poland, coal will remain very marginal in France, RTE recalls. “ It is an epiphenomenon », insists Jacques Percebois. In fact, as of yesterday, the contribution of this energy source does not exceed 1% of electricity generation in the country, and it represented in total, last year, less than two thousandths of the total production of Hexagon.
“When we look at the large meshes of the French electricity system, we are almost out of coal,” underlined Thomas Veyrenc, the Executive Director of RTE’s strategy, foresight and evaluation division, din front of the press.
The public authorities have also set a regulatory limit which is equivalent to 700 hours of operation per year for the last two power plants, out of the approximately 8,700 hours which pass during the year. The government promises to exit definitively by 2027. A decision which does not mean that the two sites will be abandoned: the thorny question of their reconversion, in particular to biomass, so that they can respond to peaks of demand without participating in climate change.
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