L’worried winter. While the prospect of an energy crisis and possible cuts haunts the minds of the French, the Minister for Energy Transition, Agnès Pannier-Runacher, assures that she is doing everything to avoid an explosion of bills paid by French households, on the airwaves from RTL. After announcing, at the beginning of September, the renewal of the tariff shield, the minister recalled that “new tariffs” will be presented by the end of September by the main energy companies: EDF, Engie or TotalEnergies.
« [Ces groupes] are in the process of finalizing tariff change proposals, [ils seront ouverts au public dans] during the month of September”, she assures on the radio station. For now, little information has been provided on the outline of these new commercial offers. Nevertheless, the government encourages energy suppliers to promote modulated price offers. Concretely, this would be inspired by the Tempo offer already proposed by EDF. Most days of the year, electricity is cheaper than for the rest of the clientele. On the other hand, around twenty days a year, the price is extremely high in order to encourage customers holding the offer to considerably reduce their consumption. Until now, this Tempo made it possible to avoid possible electrical blackouts. This season, the purchasing power argument might be more persuasive.
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Tariff shield and energy check in ambush
In addition to the commercial offers from energy operators, the executive announced on September 3 the continuation of the tariff shield for the whole of 2023. Three days later, on September 6, the Minister of the Economy, Bruno Le Mayor, had completed by ensuring that the conditions would be the same as those in force since the fall of 2021. This Sunday, Agnès Pannier-Runacher recalled that, without this shield, “the increase should have been ten times greater”. New government arbitrations must be presented by the end of September. Indeed, we are still awaiting the precise outlines of this renewal.
Last lever for the government: that of the energy check. After an exceptional payment at the end of 2021, the Minister for Energy Transition explained “working on various hypotheses […] so that it is better targeted”. And this, without specifying the “hypotheses” on the table.
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