A flagship of French research, the Soleil synchrotron, near Saclay (Essonne), will have to stop for several weeks next year because of an excessively high electricity bill, which operates almost seven days seven, twenty-four hours a day? And, with it, will other major research facilities or laboratories stop their activities?
A few weeks ago, Jean Daillant received an estimate of the electrical costs three times higher than the amount for 2022, i.e. almost 17 million euros. “With the amount announced for 2023, that’s for sure, it won’t pass”observes the managing director of Soleil, an instrument designed to unlock the intimate secrets of matter, from high-tech materials to prehistoric fossils and works of art.
The energy crisis is plunging into uncertainty for universities and research organisations, which are seeing the amounts of their bills soar this year. According to the first estimates of the Ministry of Higher Education and Research, the additional cost linked to the rise in the prices of fluids and energies would reach at least 80 million euros for universities and 40 million euros for research organizations. , “significant sums to be found”explained Minister Sylvie Retailleau, during a hearing in the Senate, on July 20.
The additional costs do not stop there: applied since 1is July, the 3.5% increase in the index point – which is used to calculate the salary of public officials – causes, in 2022, an additional expenditure of 370 million euros for universities and 120 million euros for research organizations. Faced with these exceptional overruns, several dozen establishments are already forced to dip into their working capital, a financial reserve normally reserved for investments such as the purchase large educational facilities or the renovation of their buildings, the universities constituting one of the most important real estate assets of the State.
Added to this are the incompressible costs linked to the payroll of the universities, which becomes more important as the personnel age and advance in their careers. Since 2019, the Ministry of Higher Education has stopped paying the cost of the “technical old age shift” (GVT), amounting to 80 million euros, in 2022.
Dip into reserves
By the start of this year, bills for several facilities had already jumped more than 40% for a few months. The fault of a supplier, Hydroption, winner of a public contract, which went bankrupt in 2021 and forced an emergency change of company, with an upward revision of the prices initially negotiated. The CNRS and several universities were concerned, with consequences for the operation of the laboratories. “As of February, we increased what we took from the research teams’ own resources, in order to cover the additional cost of around 50,000 euros, on a bill of 225,000 euros in previous years”recalls Alain Couret, director of the Center for the development of materials and structural studies (Cemes) in Toulouse.
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