The news spread on social networks, shared in particular by elected officials on the left. “Attention, new increase in electricity prices. The CRE has just announced that energy bills will increase by 10 to 20% in 2024,” wrote rebellious MP Clémence Guetté on X this Thursday. “15% in February, 10% in August, that was not enough: we need a new increase in the price of electricity from 10 to 20% in January 2024!”, alarmed his colleague François Ruffin, on the same network. And to call for a “price freeze”.
In reality, the energy regulatory commission (CRE) is quite calm about the evolution of electricity prices for next year. A theoretical increase of 10 to 20% in the regulated electricity sales tariff (TRVE) next February has been mentioned. The president of the commission then specified that “the theoretical calculation that the CRE will propose to the Government could lead to an evolution whose order of magnitude would be 10% maximum at the beginning of 2024, in current market conditions, before possible application of a tariff shield.
A much lower increase than that notified last year and which does not mean that it will be the one actually borne by consumers. Because the final decision is the responsibility of the government.
Besides, the year is not over. The calculation of the TRVE also depends on market behavior over the last three months of the year. However, prices may still rise or fall due to the improvement of EDF’s nuclear electricity production and the commissioning of new renewable energy capacities. “We will have to wait until the end of the year to have a solid calculation. It is still too early to calculate the level of regulated electricity sale prices in France since it will be necessary to take into account the 2024 market prices until the end of 2023 and the requests from ARENH (access Regulated for Historic Nuclear Electricity, editor’s note) during the November window,” adds the CRE.
For the record, in February 2023, the energy regulatory commission published a regulated electricity sales tariff up 99.22% over one year. Specifying that “the scales calculated by the CRE will […] not be applied to consumers and these are the frozen price scales, set by the Government, which will come into force on February 1, 2023.” The latter had limited the increase to 15%.