Connecting electric vehicle charging infrastructure and new solar and wind farms to the electricity distribution grid will require a historically high level of investment of more than 5 billion euros a year by 2032, Enedis announced Monday.
A subsidiary of EDF, Enedis presented its “preliminary” network development plan to the press for the first time.
This plan will evolve in accordance with the next energy roadmap that the government will soon approve in the multiannual energy programming law (PPE) for 2024-2033, but Enedis preferred not to wait to send a message to its industrial partners.
“takes off”
“It means for everyone, come on, take off, build factories, you can invest calmly and hire (…) You have to equip yourself and go for it,” launched Hervé Champenois, technical director of Enedis.
The 38,000-employee company is ramping up its hiring this year.
“As a whole, the reference trajectory of the network development plan induces an increase of around 20% in the Capex (investment spending, editor’s note) of Enedis during the period 2022-2032 until reaching more than 5,000 million euros per year”, according to the Enedis plan.
This represents 75% more than the annual historical average of the last forty years 1980-2020 of 2,900 million euros.
In 2022, Enedis’ investments reached 4.4 billion euros. For 2040, a total of 96,000 million euros of investment is expected, the company recalled.
“Controlled increase” of the electricity transmission tax
To finance itself, Enedis foresees a “controlled recourse to debt” with a green bond issuance program that has already begun and will continue.
Enedis also foresees “a controlled increase” in the electricity delivery tax that is applied to the final consumer, or Turpe.
“We are assuming a lower or limited increase in inflation over time,” Enedis director of regulation Christophe Gros said.
The Turpe represents about 30% of the electricity bill. It also finances the investments of the manager of the high voltage lines RTE.
Enedis is the custodian of 95% of the French distribution network, that is, 1.4 million kilometers of lines that must be maintained, repaired and modernized.
Despite the efforts made to consume less electricity, electrical uses will develop and Enedis is facing what it describes as a “triple challenge”: the electric car, the French recovery in solar and wind energy and the need to improve resistance from the network to climatic risks, storms or heat waves.
Source: BFM TV
