Zut alors!
Posted on 07/07/2022 8:41:36 AM PDT by Ultra Sonic 007
PARIS, July 7 (Reuters) - The French state has said it will fully nationalise EDF, the debt-laden utility that runs the nation's nuclear power plants and which the government has so far struggled to restructure.
It has not said whether it will buy out minority shareholders on the market or take control by law. But however it is nationalised, it doesn't guarantee a fix for EDF's mountain of debt or its corroding reactors and it won't reduce the cost of shielding consumers from sky-high energy prices.
SO WHY DOES THE GOVERNMENT WANT TO NATIONALISE EDF? Prime Minister Elisabeth Borne said a full nationalisation of EDF, in which the state already has an 84% stake, would help France manage a transition away from fossil fuels and deal with a current energy crisis exacerbated by the war in Ukraine.
But analysts say the government's main goal may be to secure a freehand in running a business that has a roughly 80% share of the French electricity market, once it is delisted and the state no longer has to answer to any other shareholders.
[snip]
President Emmanuel Macron, who was re-elected to office in April but who lost control of parliament in a June vote, scrapped an overhaul of EDF last year amid opposition from unions and the European Commission to his plan to split EDF's profitable renewables business from debt-laden nuclear assets.
WHAT'S GONE WRONG AT EDF? About half of EDF's 56 nuclear reactors in France are now offline, in part due to corrosion issues. EDF has repeatedly cut its planned nuclear output for 2022, just as Europe scrambles to find alternative energy sources as Russian gas supplies dwindle.
(Excerpt) Read more at reuters.com ...
(For historical perspective, EDF was created by an act of the French parliament in 1946; it was only opened to partial privatization in 2004.)
France wants to transition away from fossil-fuels? Lessons from Biden’s war on fossil-fuels aren’t enough for the climate-change idiots?
France is on the way to becoming another Somalie or Venezuela. The French will be on our southern border soon.
This is the one problem I have with nuclear power in the U.S. — it’s heavily regulated. Yes, it needs to be heavily regulated (we are talking about nuclear energy). But bureaucrats always mess up everything they touch.
Zut alors!
The problem is, what happens in France often times comes to the USA, look for calls to nationalize power companies and oil companies if inflation and shortages continue
I kind of laugh how so many people around here think the west isn’t going as commie as the old USSR. They need to wake up.
Yes the national energy company is in a financial crisis but that crisis was created by the French government using its already 84% controlling interest - it would not allow the company to pass on cost increases to electricity consumers, putting the company more and more in financial trouble, and not allow markets to signal the need for lower demand to consumers.
With 100% control, the French government will continue to ruin its energy sector, continuing subsidies to consumers, making the power company more and more dependent on government assistance and making the investment it needs also more and more dependent on the government - creating a permanant not well run government dependency.
I don’t know...but I fear we are right behind France.
Those calls are already out there...
Agreed.
Agreed.
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