France has burned 10.8% less gas since August 1 compared to the same period in 2018, indicates this Wednesday, December 28, the manager of French gas pipelines GRTgaz.
Gas power plants still in overdrive
This figure, stopped on December 25, assesses the amount of gas that would have been consumed if temperatures had aligned with seasonal norms, and makes it possible to account for real changes in the behavior of people and companies, called every day to energetic sobriety this winter. In raw data, the fall is 11.8%.
GRTgaz’s first winter dashboard, on December 14, already indicated a drop of 10.5%.
The sobriety is actually more marked, because gas-fired power plants are running at full speed to make up for the many nuclear reactor shutdowns in France at the moment and have consumed 42.6% more gas over the period, reports GRTgaz.
If we exclude the consumption of these plants, the decrease in gas consumption observed for France is therefore 16.9% on weather-corrected data and 18.1% on raw data.
“This drop is the consequence of a significant reduction in consumption by public distribution and large industrial companies”, “is partly offset by a greater demand from gas electricity centers to ensure the balance of the electrical system”, indicates a note from GRTgaz accompanying table.
GRTgaz publishes a weekly gas consumption dashboard for the winter of 2022-2023 to assess the sobriety efforts of households and industrialists since the October implementation of the government’s sobriety plan.
Source: BFM TV
