Consumers should start cutting back on energy use immediately, bosses of France’s big three energy companies urged on Sunday, warning of social tensions next winter if reserves aren’t replenished.
“The effort must be immediate, collective and massive,” wrote TotalEnergies’ Patrick Pouyanne, EDF’s Jean-Bernard Levy and ENGIE’s Catherine MacGregor in an op-ed in JDD Weekly.
The call came after the French government said this week it would be fully utilizing its natural gas reserves until the fall as European countries braced for supply cuts from key supplier Russia amid the dragging Ukraine war and would build a floating terminal more to receive gas deliveries by ship.
The three energy chiefs said in the article that Europe’s energy production has been further hampered by hydropower production, which has been suffering from drought.
“The increase in energy prices resulting from these difficulties threatens our social and political fabric and affects families’ purchasing power too much,” they said, adding: “The best energy is the one we don’t use.”
They said: “Every consumer and every business needs to change their habits and limit their energy use immediately, be it electricity, gas or oil products.”
Replenishing natural gas reserves over the summer is a priority, as is “eliminating national energy waste,” they said.
France is less dependent on Russian gas supplies than neighboring Germany, as it gets almost 70 percent of its electricity needs from nuclear power.
But according to the International Energy Agency (IEA), France needs to accelerate the deployment of low-carbon energy technologies and energy-efficiency solutions if it is to meet its energy and climate goals.
Above all, France needs “more sustainable and consistent policies” to develop alternatives to fossil fuels such as wind and solar power, the IEA said.
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