Benjamin Above
Nuclear bubble, the return
BENJAMIN DESSUS IS PRESIDENT OF GLOBAL CHANCE
At the end of last year (“Les Echos” on 24-12-2008), we warned public opinion and the government against the risk of France oversizing its electricity generation fleet very significantly in 2020, as it already did so in the 1980s. Analysis of the preparatory document for Multi-Year Electric Investment Programming (PPI) showed that, if the Grenelle commitments were met, 130 TWh of electricity would not find buyers in France in 2020 and should therefore be exported (compared to 80 TWh in 2008).
Six months later, when the president of EDF requests a 20% tariff increase to finance his investments, where are we?
Jean-Louis Borloo presented to the press on June 3 a PPI document in every respect similar to the preparatory document, while the situation has deeply changed. The crisis has gone through this, while the PPI continues to ignore it, posting annual GDP growth of 2,1% per year from 2008 to 2020. However, we know that the industrial production index, which has already lost 11 % in 2008 will continue to fall in 2009, by at least 15%. In total over these two years, the stunting is around 30% compared to PPI forecasts. It is therefore entirely improbable that electricity consumption in the industrial sector will reach 158 TWh in 2020 (compared to 132 in 2008) as the PPI persists in predicting, maintaining the hypothesis of a massive reindustrialisation of France. , reverse of the historical trend, and denying the crisis. It is much more likely that this production will continue to lose points in the overall French GDP. One can therefore very seriously wonder if the consumption of the industry in 2020 displayed by the PPI is not overestimated by 20 to 30 TWh. Given this slowdown, it is rather 150 to 160 TWh of excess electricity that we should try to export in 2020.
How to export 160 TWh per year when our cross-border high voltage lines are today limited to less than 100 TWh? By 2020, an investment effort of unprecedented 400.000 volt lines will be required which will certainly come up against major social acceptance questions, with significant delays and additional costs.
Who to export to? We are told to our European neighbors. Except that they too are experiencing the crisis and sometimes more harshly than us, that they have undertaken proactive electricity control policies (unlike France) and renewable electricity production and that some of them , with the support of our President VRP in nuclear reactors, are considering new reactors.
Finally, at what cost? Here again we are swimming in full uncertainty: since 2003, the last date on which the Directorate General for Energy (DGEMP), published figures concerning the EPR, the investment costs have been multiplied by 2,5. Between 2006 and 2008 alone, the full cost of producing electricity based on the Flamanville EPR, according to EDF, fell from 46 euros / MWh to 54 euros / MWh, and to 60 for Penly, compared to 28,40 euros / MWh in 2003 (DGEMP), more than a doubling in five years! And the difficulties that EDF is encountering today in the construction of Flamanville is not to reassure us.
We have the feeling that we are reproducing the same errors as in the 1970s and 1980s: we “predicted” in 1975, under pressure from the nuclear lobby, a consumption of 1.000 TWh in 2000 (against 474 TWh in reality), hence the oversizing of the nuclear fleet, of a dozen slices, which we have known.
And it is not the prospect of a breakthrough of the electric vehicle ("Les Echos" of December 26, 2008) that risks changing the situation: if the ambitious objective of 1 million electric vehicles in 2020 was met, for 10.000 km / year per vehicle, this would only represent 2 TWh / year of additional consumption, less than a quarter of the production of an EPR, 5% of national consumption…
It would be difficult to understand under these conditions that the national debate on the new EPR at Penly, which is about to open, is limited to local considerations and is not an opportunity to come back to demand forecasts and the relevance of the choices of investment. And then, in the current period, would it not be better to invest in the thermal rehabilitation of buildings whose employment content per million euros spent is at least 5 times higher than that of a nuclear power plant.
Prospective investors interested in the Penly EPR would be well advised not to rely too much on these official "forecasts", but to make their profitability calculations seriously based on a more realistic outlook.
The PPI report:
http://www.developpement-durable.gouv.f ... i_2002.pdf
This is why the CEO of EDF is claiming a 20% increase in electricity prices !!!
