A decree published on Friday provides for the possibility of a gas cut for the largest consumers as a “last resort” and in the event of a supply interruption.
Targeted gas cuts will be able to be demanded in France from major consumers to deal with a possible interruption of Russian supply next winter, according to a decree published Friday in the Official Journal. The government and the GRDF gas distribution network announced last week that they were preparing for this eventuality, pending the publication of the decree. It is “a device of last resort“, had then underlined the Ministry of Ecological Transition. Only the largest consumers, who use more than 5 gigawatt hours per year, are affected by these measures. According to the government, they are amongabout 5000“. Individuals are therefore not affected.
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Possible cuts in order of priority
According to the decree, these large consumers will receive an inquiry from the gas manager asking them for several pieces of information such as their activity or “the economic consequences it would suffer in the event of a reduction or cessation of its gas consumption», as well as a means of contact to send him a load shedding order at any time. They must respond within a maximum of two months, at the risk of a fine. If necessary, these denominations, also called “shedding» will be done according to an order of priority, to avoid penalizing consumers likely to suffer major economic consequences in the event of a gas cut and sites carrying out missions of general interest (schools, hospitals, retirement homes, etc.) . They must be completed within a maximum of two hours.
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For the time being, an interruption of Russian supplies “would have no consequence because we are at the end of winter“, told AFP last week the general manager of GRDF, Laurence Poirier-Dietz. On the other hand, “the question will arise of the filling of the storages, which happens during the summer“, she recalled. The use of load shedding is also planned as a last resort for electricity consumption, in order to avoid a generalized and uncontrolled blackout if consumption were to exceed the level of electricity available at a given time. If stopping supplying the largest consumers of electricity is no longer enough, it is possible to organize rotating blackouts in around 200,000 households at a time for 2 hours.