Gas consumption in France fell by 6.2% in 2022

Gas consumption in France, excluding use in power plants, fell by 6.2% in 2022 compared to 2021, due to customer sobriety efforts and high prices, the transmission network operator announced on Friday. gas GRTgaz.

The sobriety efforts, promoted by the government plan since October, and the high prices in 2022 have led to this “very significant” drop in gas consumption among households and professional consumers (excluding large industrialists), told AFP Thierry Found, CEO of GRTgaz.

These data have been corrected for temperature effects, reflecting consumption compared to seasonal norms.

“Usually, we rather observe an annual decrease of 1%, so it is quite significant”, commented Mr. Trouvou. “It’s due to good citizenship but also to the very high prices that we have experienced,” he also said on France info.

In raw data, taking into account a “climate effect” with a very mild autumn and winter, the drop is even more notable, amounting to 9.3% for a total consumption of 430 TWh (compared to 474 in 2021 ) on all uses of gas in France.

In detail, consumption fell by 16.6% in the public distribution network (households and professionals) and by 11.5% among large manufacturers directly connected to the gas transmission network, in raw data.

This decline in national consumption was however largely mitigated by the strong surge in the use of gas in power plants, which ran at full speed to compensate for the temporary difficulties of the French electro-nuclear fleet last year.

Over the year, the use of gas to supply power plants increased by 54.4% to 61 TWh (in raw data). “It’s historic, we have never used so much gas to produce electricity,” said Mr. Found to AFP.