Buying renewable energy will soon be easier for businesses. Matignon is in the process of building a special fund to guarantee the contracts of the companies that will play the game.
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The objective is to push companies to sign electricity supply contracts as much as possible with wind and solar farm operators, groups like Engie or smaller operators. Each year, companies negotiate prices and buy electricity at specific prices for the following year or longer periods. However, with geopolitical tensions, contract prices are soaring, placing all players in very complicated, even dangerous situations.
Goal #1 is to remove any risk in the relationship between the supplier and the customer. With this new mechanism, the State guarantees renewable energy producers that they will be paid, even if the client company encounters difficulties or goes bankrupt. It is both a safety and an adjustment mechanism. The public authorities will intervene as a last resort if there is a problem.
Concretely: this guarantee fund set up by the State will have an initial envelope of around 70 million euros and will be managed by Bpifrance, the public investment bank. These are long-term contracts that run for 15 to 25 years. Called PPAs (Power Purchase Agreements), these contracts are not widely used today in France compared to other European countries such as Spain. Their advantage is twofold: first, to support the development of renewable energies, then to secure the players, from upstream to downstream, by allowing manufacturers to obtain carbon-free electricity supplies at a predictable price.
The device must be activated next year to initially allow contracts representing up to 500 megawatts of cumulative power to be taken as collateral, or the equivalent of the consumption of a city like Bordeaux. And if it works well, this mechanism could be developed and amplified in the following years.