Energy

Challenges for the sector

Simultaneously decarbonised, decentralised and digitalised, our 21^st century energy system demands that all players thoroughly review their economic and business models.

Upstream of the value chain, production means will firstly have to adapt to ensure supply security while also meeting the urgent climatic need to decrease the carbon intensity of the mix. This is why French nuclear plants will continue to play a major role within the French energy mix, subject to upgrading in the light of post-Fukushima security constraints and social acceptability.

This recent more renewable energy mix will also have to be increasingly decentralised and more intermittent, demanding a rethink of the electrical power system in terms of :

• Architecture, with the development of partially autonomous, local systems
• Governance, focusing on the increasing importance of local players
• Funding, with the need to find a compromise between public incentives favouring the development of renewable energy sources and the need to respect certain fundamental economic principles to provide players with long-term investment signals.

In transport and distribution activities, regulated operators will need to adapt their infrastructures to meet demand, develop cross-border interconnections, while integrating a more intermittent and decentralised system, partly by harnessing « smart grid » technology. More specifically, historic distribution operators must cope with the deployment of smart meters and the necessary extension of their activities based on new network uses (electric vehicles, collective auto-consumption/self-sufficiency, flexibilities, …).

Energy supply players are going to have to adapt to an increasingly competitive environment with growing pressure for operational excellence and for improved competitiveness of their cost structures. They will also have to diversify their supply of energy-related services in line with customer expectations (managing and optimising consumption, auto-consumption/self-sufficiency, recharging of electric vehicles) with the threat of disintermediation by other service providers within the sector (home services or 100% digital).