Closed since March, the plant started to produce electricity again on Monday.
With the return of the cold, here comes the return of coal. The Émile-Huchet coal-fired power station in Saint-Avold (Moselle), which closed last March, started producing electricity again on Monday morning. The temperatures, hitherto relatively mild, are now “seasonal, and we have been called to produce since 9 a.m. this Monday morning”said the director of the site, Philippe Lenglart.
Highly emitting CO2, the Émile-Huchet power station, one of the last in the French fleet to run on coal, was to close its doors definitively at the end of March. But at the end of the spring, the government reconsidered its decision to secure the country’s electricity supply, given the conflict in Ukraine and the setbacks encountered by EDF’s nuclear fleet. He insisted that Emmanuel Macron’s commitment to close all coal-fired power plants in France remained “unchanged”.
GazelEnergie, which operates the Saint-Avold site, therefore had to recall the employees who benefited from a departure plan. To do this, he had to pay generous wages and return bonuses for the duration of the winter. The executive even had to introduce into the law for purchasing power, voted in early August, a measure allowing GazelEnergie to rehire its employees. More than half had to retire, and the youngest had to be reclassified within the company’s new projects.
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In total, it will take more than 500,000 tonnes of coal to run the site until the end of March which, when operating at full capacity, produces up to 600 megawatt hours (MWh) and can supply a third of the homes in the region. Great East. Only one other coal-fired power plant continues to operate in France. It is located in Cordemais (Loire-Atlantique) and is operated by EDF. On Monday, coal power plants produced around 3% of French electricity, against nearly 60% for nuclear power and between 5% and 10% for wind power.
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