French businesses are not thrilled that their safe nuclear power, which they took decades to create and which was highlighted as the wave of the future in 1990s Kyoto CO2 emission treaties, has been hijacked by anti-science activists.
Because their already expensive cost of doing business is now even higher.
French companies’ tenuous competitive advantage due to energy cost has been whittled down by American natural gas improvements and German subsidies to offset higher electricity costs due to their solar power experimentation.
Electricite de France SA’s nuclear reactors, which make France the most reliant on atomic power in the world, need billions of euros of upgrades but the political fashion is instead more costly renewable power. President Francois Hollande believes in socialism but his country already has more jobs losses than any other European country in the past decade, and an economic slump and a trade deficit near a record high means little money to redistribute. So endorsing new, inefficient green energy instead of the already successful green energy they have makes little sense to business leaders.
French power prices for big industrial users are projected to average as much as 25 percent higher next year than in Germany, according to Uniden, a lobby whose members consume 70 percent of electricity used by industry in France.
Though not for long. Germany can't afford its subsidies either.
Hollande Draws French Industry Ire as Nuclear-Energy Edge Fades by Tara Patel, Bloomberg.com
