France’s energy-intensive companies are stepping up contingency plans and turning natural gas boilers into oil equivalents as they try to avoid disruptions if any further cuts in Russian gas supplies lead to blackouts, Reuters reports.
At a business and economy conference in southern France, several top executives said they were preparing for possible blackouts.
“What we’ve done is we’ve converted our boilers so they can run on natural gas or oil, and we can even switch to coal if needed,” said Florent Menegaux, head of Michelin, one of the leading companies tire manufacturer in the world.
“The aim is to avoid closing a plant in case we face a shortage,” he added, saying that while gas shortages in Europe are likely, oil will still be available as an alternative.
It takes days to start producing tires at a manufacturing plant, Menegaux said, making it necessary to maintain a stable energy supply.
Russia in June cut flows through the Nord Stream 1 pipeline, the main natural gas transport route to western Europe, to 40% of capacity. Politicians and industry are worried there will be further supply constraints linked to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, which Moscow describes as a “special military operation”.
Across Europe, industry is turning to more polluting fuels than natural gas as it prioritizes dealing with the cost to the economy of business disruptions and soaring energy prices over long-term goals to transition to zero carbon dioxide emissions fuels.
French Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire told top business executives attending the conference that it would be irresponsible not to prepare for shortages.
“Let’s prepare for the Russian gas cut,” he told them. “Today is the most likely scenario.”
France relies on nuclear power for about 70% of its electricity, meaning it is much less directly dependent on Russian gas than neighboring Germany.
But state-controlled power producer EDF is struggling to meet France’s needs due to outages at its aging power plants, increasing pressure on the rest of the energy sector.
Power production at 29 of its 56 nuclear reactors has been shut down for inspections and repairs.
The French government controls company by company which of them depend on the uninterrupted supply of energy.
It has also tried to cushion the impact of rising energy prices by capping retail gas and electricity prices until the end of the year, which has helped keep French inflation among the lowest in Europe.
A chairman of another major industrial company, who asked not to be named, told Reuters on the sidelines of the conference that he believed all major companies were considering a shift to oil.
Automaker Stellantis is weighing options for producing its own power in the event of an energy crisis, Chief Executive Carlos Tavares said at a French plant last month.
These include building its own power plant or investing in an existing one to secure part of the output.
Former energy minister Michal Kurtyka of Poland, whose country relies on coal for 70% of its energy, told conference executives that Europe was heading for a “perfect storm” this winter.
Source: Capital
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