Grants, bank loans, call for savings? The financing parameters of the future nuclear power plant program planned by the State and EDF for after 2035 will be set “at the end of the year”, the Minister of Energy Transition, Agnès Pannier Runacher, declared this Wednesday.
The new executive director of EDF, Luc Rémont, recalled this Tuesday before a Commission of the National Assembly that the estimated cost for the construction of the 6 EPRs announced by Emmanuel Macron last year, was to date of 51 billion euros, an amount impossible to assume only by EDF. heavily in debt.
“The cost of capital can be a subject of work in the structuring of these projects and there is the ability to work, project by project, so that its cost does not increase, that is one of the issues we are working on for the EPR series “, said Luc Rémont on Tuesday.
Caisse des Dépôts requested?
Among the possible ways, the minister mentioned this Wednesday morning a contribution of State capital to EDF, of which it is the main shareholder, or the support of the Caisse des Dépots. This topic, mentioned by the president of the Caisse Eric Lombard himself, arouses a lot of emotion because the Caisse manages the popular savings of the Livret A and finances social housing in France. “I am not saying that this is the solution we have chosen, but it is one of the issues that we have to look at,” the minister qualified on this issue.
He defended himself against any budget drift: “We invest, it is not an expense, we invest in something that should give us money,” he said, taking as an example the financing subsidies for wind or solar energy producers: “We have supported renewable energies and today contribute more than 20,000 million euros to the state budget”.
Source: BFM TV
