Christopher Guérin is the CEO of Nexans. The company produces and supplies electrical cables and services from the production of energy, whether wind, solar, hydraulic or nuclear, to its transmission through interconnections between countries and different production areas and of consumption.
franceinfo: On November 28, the European Commission estimated the investments needed to modernize the electricity network by 2030 at 584 billion euros. What does that mean precisely?
Christopher Guérin: It is indeed a dizzying figure. To give you a little historical perspective, you had two big waves in the last century of electrification of the world. The first took place from 1890 to 1910 and it was the birth of the first electrical networks. The second great wave, we know it, is the post-war period, the Thirty Glorious Years, where we built the electrical generation that we know and which is essentially driven by nuclear power in France, and fossil fuels elsewhere and electrical networks. Well, we are now entering a third electrical revolution where we must replace fossil fuels with renewable energies and also replace a large part of the European and American electrical networks which are more than 40 to 50 years old and which are coming to an end. of life.
Does this mean that the current electricity network is not capable of supporting all future electricity production? We know that it will be very important.
Absolutely, daily electricity consumption will increase by 20 to 30%. Indeed, electric vehicles need electricity, electric heating is on the rise and we also know that the more we electrify our daily lives, the more we will move in the direction of decarbonization of the planet. So yes, we need more electricity, but if we need more electricity, we must also increase the bandwidth of our electricity networks. This is exactly what happened with telecoms.
This is what you are doing and we imagine that you have a full order book over several years?
It’s impressive because on the generation side, we obviously have the connection of offshore wind farms, but we are going to source the electrical power of Africa and the Middle East in solar power which we will transport by cables submarines 1,000 kilometers long, 3,000 meters deep and weighing 9,000 tons. Which corresponds to the weight of the Eiffel Tower. We transport them to connect Africa to Europe and it’s a kind of alternative to Russia’s gas pipelines to create this “Energy Internet”, if you can call it that. The second element is to renew all of the electrical networks.
Should they be completely renewed?
Exactly. Our major customers, RTE, Enedis, Eon, Enel are in the process of renewing the networks across Europe. We supply them with cables for this.
This means that your customers are preparing for this very significant electricity production to come. Are you reassuring us by saying that they anticipated this total renewal of the electricity network?
Yes, things are progressing very well and the 584 billion investment from the European Commission is entirely in that direction. It is the real need for the next five to ten years to renew this network. We are building the electricity network for the next 50 years, so a fairly colossal investment is required.
Do you think that in 2035, for example, when we will no longer be able to buy a new thermal car, we will have a network which will be entirely capable of accommodating this significant electricity consumption?
It is obligatory, even if we have the choice not to be ready, because we are moving from fossil fuels to renewables.
“Electricity consumption will increase by 20 to 40% and therefore we are obliged to increase this bandwidth immediately.”
Christopher Guérin, CEO of Nexansat franceinfo
Your raw material is copper. How do you manage to source your supplies? We imagine that Europe is not the only one today which is in the process of renewing its electricity network.
Quite. Copper is the conductor of electricity. You have gold, copper and aluminum, but copper, in fact, is the best conductor of electricity in the world. The potential problem that will arise in the coming years is that all nations wake up at the same time. Both for the switch from fossil to renewable, but also for the renewal of their network and the transition to electricity like China, which is in the process of investing massively in electricity. So there is a congestion occurring on copper and which could generate a risk of shortage in the next two or three years.
There is also a much higher price risk?
Of course, the topic of price will be a topic, but the topic of physical accessibility is more important. This is why the alternative that we recommend is recycling. As we are going to dismantle old networks, we are sitting on urban mines somewhere. The alternative to a lack of primary copper is to recycle copper that has already been used in previous cables, 30 or 40 years ago.
You seem to be saying that this is a future issue. Isn’t that one of the concerns you have, as head of Nexans, in terms of supply?
For supply, we try to secure.
That is to say, do you stock up?
No, we cannot stockpile because that would be speculation, but we secure our supplies of primary copper. On the other hand, we are already encouraging our customers to think about recycling. The message we send to them is that your waste today is your growth tomorrow. So we have to use waste because it really is an important resource for growth.
Will copper cost more? Is there a risk of shortage?
It will cost more.
Does this mean that your electricity network will also cost more and that ultimately the price of electricity will also increase?
We will essentially use copper a lot for electric vehicles, which need twice as much copper as a thermal vehicle. On the other hand, future networks are more likely to be based on aluminum and aluminum is cheaper than copper in supply and allows us to draw caps over very long lengths. So, no, it’s not that simple. There are still low-cost alternatives that exist for network development.
So electricity won’t cost more even if it was more expensive to transport?
That’s what we think. Afterwards, there is a cost to the energy transition, but we must reposition ourselves over time. We are building the future of our electricity networks, from generation to transmission, for the next 40 to 50 years.
With what funding?
European funding is significant because there we are talking about 584 billion for electricity networks, but there is also 900 billion for offshore wind farms and solar farms, so it is quite impressive.
So you are saying that the money is there, that it is available and that it is ready to be put into electrical networks so that the electricity is significant and at a reasonable price.
Yes, I am very optimistic because the funding is there. Strategic planning in Europe is really starting to take shape. All customer plans are pretty clear. The only downside is access to natural resources because European ambition can be much more important than Europe’s potential accessibility to natural resources and that is the whole point.