After a warning from the head of three power companies, France’s government has announced that it will restart a coal-fired plant this winter.
A coal-fueled power plant in the north-east of France is due to be restarted by the country’s government this winter in order to better combat energy insecurity resulting in part due to ongoing hostilities with Russia.
The announcement that the Saint-Avold will be brought back online comes shortly after the heads of three major energy companies in France warned that the general public must “immediately” cut back on energy use to better enable officials to better handle energy insecurity.
According to broadcaster RTL, officials have said that the coal-fired plant is being brought back into service “a precaution, given the Ukrainian situation”.
Le Figaro meanwhile notes officials as saying that they will be including so-called “environmental compensation” as part of the plan to reactivate the plant, with the publication claiming that an environmentally neutral reopening for the plant has been demanded by government.
As a result, the plant’s operator will engage in the likes of reforestation as part of the reopening to meet this green demand.
The announcement that authorities will reopen the plant comes shortly after the head of three major energy companies in France — Engie, EDF and TotalEnergies — warned that the public must start conserving energy straight away in order to secure the country’s energy situation.
“Acting this summer will allow us to be better prepared to tackle next winter and in particular to preserve our gas reserves,” the power tsars wrote. “We therefore call for awareness and collective and individual action so that each of us – each consumer, each company – changes their behaviour and immediately limits their consumption of energy, electricity, gas and petroleum products.”
“The effort must be immediate, collective and massive,” they went on to say, emphasising that “every gesture” towards this goal “counts”.
Environmentally obsessed Germany has also announced that it will be revving up its own coal-burning capabilities in order to better deal with the ongoing energy crisis, with the country’s economic and climate Tsar, Robert Habeck, saying that the measures are necessary to conserve much-needed gas.
“To reduce gas consumption, less gas must be used to generate electricity. Coal-fired power plants will have to be used more instead,” he previously said, though admitted that he found it “bitter” that his green agenda-driven government had to rely on such a high emission fuel.
The official however has remained adamant that Germany’s nuclear power plants — the last three of which are due to be shut down by the end of the year — will not be used to buffer energy supply problems, despite calls from all sides for Germany to keep them online.
So bad is the situation that even officials within the climate-crazy EU are now calling on Germany to keep using the plants.
“There are still three nuclear power plants operating in Germany, this corresponds to 25% of their electricity consumption,” Internal Market tsar Thierry Breton is reported as saying.
“Rather than deciding to cut them at the end of the year as provided for in the coalition agreements, we can perhaps say to ourselves that we will continue them for one or two years in order to solve this problem,” he went on to say.