France’s record power exports still enable national gas plants to operate

The monthly super residual demand coverage shows how France is able to cover its national demand only with renewables, hydro and nuclear. Then why do we often see gas plants running?

To understand the nature of high French imports in 2024, we focus on super residual demand coverage. This is the percentage of demand covered by renewables, nuclear and hydro. Pretty impressive to see how France’s power mix in 2024 is consistently satisfied by these low-carbon energy sources.

Then why do we often see French gas plants running? These startup in times of low renewable energy production but also when neighbouring prices skyrocket, offering the opportunity to the nuclear fleet to capture foreign market share and consequently leaving space to gas plants to operate on a national level.