PARIS (Reuters) – Future investments by EDF could exceed 20 billion euros per year, said Energy Transition Minister Agnès Pannier-Runacher on Thursday, specifying that this level was the subject of discussions with the group .

While the public electrician is faced with the need to maintain its existing nuclear fleet and build new reactors in France, its CEO, Luc Rémont, mentioned in July a potential amount of 25 billion euros per year.

“What we are talking about (…) for EDF is investments which could reach (…) more than 20 billion euros per year,” declared Agnès Pannier-Runacher during a conference on nuclear organized at the headquarters of the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), in Paris.

“There is a discussion about whether it is 20 or whether it is more,” she added.

While France wants to build at least six EPR2s in around twenty years, the minister specified that the construction of new nuclear reactors would only represent a limited part of these investments for EDF, i.e. some 3 billion euros per year. .

The construction of new reactors “is not a financial challenge, it is an industrial challenge”, she also said, adding that the financing schemes envisaged in France – such as “contracts for difference” or regulated asset base systems – were similar to those implemented in other countries.

EDF and the government are discussing new nuclear regulations that should allow the group to invest while protecting consumers from excessive price increases. This could result in a cap on the income of the electrician, of which the State once again became the sole shareholder at the beginning of June.

At a time when France is trying to obtain favorable regulation of nuclear power at the European level through the reform of the electricity market, Emmanuel Macron announced on Monday his intention to “take back control of the price of our electricity” as part of ‘a law planned by the end of the year, without specifying how.

Representatives from around twenty countries are participating with France in the nuclear conference organized at the OECD, including Canada, Japan, the Czech Republic, Poland, the Netherlands, Turkey, Ukraine , the United Kingdom and the United States.

In this context, they published a call to support nuclear power in view of the next United Nations conference on climate change (COP28) which will be held in Dubai from November 30 to December 12.

(Reporting by Benjamin Mallet; edited by Blandine Hénault)

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