threatened with closure for climatic reasons, the Saint-Avold coal power plant resumes activity for the winter

The Saint-Avold power station, one of the last two French coal-fired power stations, begins producing electricity again on Tuesday morning. Employees nevertheless remain worried about their future on the site.

Like every year as winter approaches, the Moselle coal-fired power plant in Saint-Avold (Moselle) resumed activity on Tuesday, November 12 in the morning, reports franceinfo. It's a new season of total uncertainty for its employees, since they restart the machine like every winter in the face of the cold, while having filed a strike notice and without having the guarantee of still being there in a few months.

Emmanuel Macron has committed to completely freeing himself from coal before 2027, to decarbonize the energy sector in order to fight against climate change. Saint-Avold is one of the last two coal-fired power stations in the country. It produces the equivalent of a third of the consumption of the Grand Est when operating at full capacity. Around 500 jobs, direct and induced, will be threatened if the plant were to close its doors. The threat is all the more tangible as a large part of their fixed-term contracts end in April.

Their only exit route, conversion to biogas or biomass, is still not confirmed. Emmanuel Macron called in September 2023 for the last two coal-fired power plants in the country, in Saint-Avold and Cordemais (Loire-Atlantique), to be converted by 2027. Since then, EDF has announced that it is abandoning the reconversion project. Cordemais. As for Saint-Avold, worried by the lack of guarantees, its employees filed a strike notice on September 25, which runs until April 2025.

An amendment to the 2025 finance bill to guarantee this reconversion had been tabled and voted on in the National Assembly, but it ultimately disappeared, the amended article having been entirely deleted. Daniel Gremillet, LR senator from the Vosges, announced his intention to table a new amendment to this effect, but it still has to pass the test of voting, or even, in the case of 49.3, that it be included in the final version of the bill proposed by the government. He had also declared himself “unfavorable” to the first.

The government is procrastinating, sources close to the matter told franceinfo. It is the Minister responsible for Energy Olga Givernet who must decide. In the meantime, his ministry says that “the State is committed to finding a lasting solution for the site and the employees”. “We are waiting for a viable project to employ them, to give perspectives,” the minister said again on Tuesday November 12 on BFM Business, confirming a closure of the Saint-Avold power plant in 2027. “In 2027, we will no longer burn coal, that’s for sure,” she assures.