France temporarily allows energy producers to burn more coal because otherwise there could be a shortage of electricity. The French government has therefore raised the limits for coal-fired power stations for the first two months of the year.
The plan was already suggested in January and has now been formally implemented. The national grid operator had warned about possible power shortages when it gets cold for a long time and insufficient wind energy is available.
Another factor is that an unusually high number of French nuclear reactors are currently shut down for maintenance. Defects were discovered at the end of last year at a nuclear power plant near Poitiers. Certain pipelines must first be replaced there. Another plant has also been shut down because the same type of reactors are used there.
There are still a few power stations in the country that generate energy by burning coal. They may only be in operation for a certain number of hours per year, in order to limit CO2 emissions. It has now been determined that they can run for about a thousand hours in the first two months of this year. That is three hundred hours more than the limit set in 2019.
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