Electricity: a drop in consumption has been confirmed in France in 2023

France saw a further decline in electricity consumption in 2023, the result of a drive for sobriety as well as a reaction to inflation, according to a full-year report released on Wednesday by high-voltage line manager RTE. According to a previous report, consumption fell 7-8% in November and December.

“In 2023, electricity consumption in France adjusted for weather effects (regardless of weather changes from year to year) amounted to 445.4 TWh, which is 3.2% less than in 2022, when consumption had already reached a minimum of 460.2 TWh due to the energy crisis,” RTE indicated in its “Electricity Assessment 2023”.

It is even significantly lower than the consumption level of 2020, the first year of the health crisis (458.7 TWh), and “we will now have to go back to the early 2000s to find consumption levels comparable to those of 2023,” RTE emphasizes. .

The downturn has “affected all sectors” (residential, industrial, tertiary), RTE emphasizes. The results of the survey, conducted by Ipsos on a large sample of 13,000 people, “suggest that this decline is not only the result of voluntary temperance initiatives, but is also the result of the reaction of the population and economic actors in relation to rising prices throughout the economy.

Less fear of cuts

This fall in consumption, coupled with a rise in production (+11%), has eliminated fears of cuts that surrounded the end of 2022 under “particularly exceptional” circumstances, emphasized Thomas Weirenz, chief executive of the strategy division. Prospects and assessment of RTE.

It then had to deal with a hydraulic crisis (the lowest level of production since 1976), concerns about gas supplies related to the war in Ukraine, and a historic crisis in French nuclear production caused by the phenomenon of corrosion. At the same time, there was a “partial recovery” (+15%) to 320.4 TWh, RTE points out, emphasizing that we are still far from the standards of previous years (394.7 TWh on average for the period 2014-2019).

Hydropower also recovered (+18%) thanks to better water supplies, but was followed by wind (50.7 TWh compared to 58.8 for hydro), which boomed (+31%) “because the installed base was significant.” and also because the year was windy,” emphasized Thomas Weirenz, and solar energy production also reached “record volumes” (21.5 TWh).