Heat and light costs - looking forward

[Iceni]

Having an interest in what is ahead I still keep abreast of fuel costs in the UK as my French is not good enough for me to do so in France. Currently the following is going on:

Oil at an all time high, we are in the summer months and OPEC say they cannot increase production so no chance of this coming down soon.
Electricity prices estimated to need to go up by 15% per year as no new power stations have been built in years and oil is a major cost.
Gas prices could go up at the same rate as electricity due to the fact that the UK is running out of own produced gas before it has completed the ports capable of bringing the gas ashore and of course there was a huge rush to build gas fired power stations which will add to the electricity cost.

I know that this cost is much higher in France (even more so for the pensioners as in the UK there is a set price scheme for anyone on a pension - set at a very low monthly rate for total light and heat costs). Will France be able to keep prices static due to their nuclear power stations or are they also aging? Are they facing the same gas problem? The oil price is world wide so there is nothing they can do to avoid that.

Looking to the time when we live on a fixed income this has to be thought of as I am sure the pension will not increase to cover this much of a price hike on what is a major cost.

Di
http://www.iceni-it.co.uk

[Idealfrance]

Since the oil crisis in the 70's, France has had a policy of becoming as autonomous as possible in its production of electricty which explains the high proportion of nuclear energy production (about 75% in kWh) and hydroelectric production (about 10%). What is odd, though, is that there doesn't seem to be any construction, either now or planned for the immediate future, of new nuclear power stations despite their life expectancy of about 40 years.

The problem is that in about 2015 there are going to be a lot of nuclear power stations in France that come to the end of their planned life and while the price of uranium is very stable, and expected to remain so, I'm fairly sure that nuclear power stations aren't cheap to build. This has to have an effect on energy prices if they suddenly decide that they need to replace them all. Maybe they are all running under capacity or that they anitcipate prolonging the expected life of the existing stations from 40 to 60 years as they did with similarly designed power stations in the USA.

I hope that the government is smart enough to implement a renewal plan that minimises the impact of the construction of a whole bunch of new nuclear power stations on the electricity bill.

Realistically, any resource of finite quantity is going to go up in price as it becomes scarcer so a long term bet is nuclear electricity for the cheapest fuel bills. But long term could mean more than 20 years - more than long enough to think about changing your central heating.

Ben Symons
http://www.idealfrance.com