France has the “ability to end the winter” without power cuts, assures this Friday the Minister of Energy Transition, Agnès Pannier-Runacher. It also calls for continued effort to save energy, which is essential to preserve the climate.
“I am confident in our ability to finish the winter, but we must be vigilant,” said the minister on franceInfo. “The sobriety plan is the passage of winter but also our whole strategy to achieve carbon neutrality by 2050”, she continued, noting that it should “not just be a one-off effort” . We must “pay attention to the temperature in the offices, to our fuel consumption, all this consumption of fossil fuels (who) cause global warming”.
Sunday, questioned on France 5, the Minister of the Economy, Bruno Le Maire, had abounded in the same direction. “It is likely that there will be no power cuts” this winter, “because the EDF workers have done their job well. And we were also helped by the weather.
Nuclear power, the majority in French electricity production, has been partially lacking in recent months, exposing the country to possible power cuts in the event of exceptional cold. “On December 12, a month ago, it was very cold, we passed without any difficulty a point where our consumption was maximum”, with a peak “at 80-81 GWh”, however recalled Agnès Pannier. -Runcher.
“We have proven that we are able to withstand peaks of cold”
To pass this peak, the efforts of households and businesses have made it possible to reduce national consumption by “7 GW, the equivalent of the production of seven nuclear reactors”, according to the minister. “This means that with the sobriety efforts made by large companies, administrations, local authorities but also all French people, with all of EDF’s work to reconnect its power plants, and the work we have done to strengthen our import capacities from Germany, Spain and the United Kingdom, we have proven that we are able to pass cold peaks”, she underlined.
At its lowest during the summer of 2022 due to maintenance and repair operations, the availability of nuclear reactors has increased in recent weeks. “The nuclear fleet is able to provide nearly 45GW of electrical power to the national grid” and “the available power will continue to increase until the end of January,” EDF said Thursday evening. France has also become an electricity exporter again in recent days.