Total Cuts Power Prices for Small Businesses After Macron’s Request

(Bloomberg) -- France’s TotalEnergies SE will cut power prices for very small businesses, bowing to President Emmanuel Macron’s demand that “excessive” contracts already signed be renegotiated.

TotalEnergies’s pledge came a day after Macron urged suppliers to help small companies cope with soaring bills as bakers across the country led a chorus of protests. The energy giant and rivals like Electricite de France SA and Engie SA were summoned by the Finance Ministry Friday afternoon to discuss help for small customers.

When offering prices between August and November 2022, TotalEnergies had to account for record power-supply costs that at one point exceeded €1,000 per megawatt-hour. It’s now proposing to reduce the rate to €320 on average for very small firms who signed contracts in that period, once state aid is taken into account.

The new tariffs will be applied retroactively from the start of the contracts, TotalEnergies said. Given the recent decline in wholesale prices, it will also offer lower rates to new customers from Monday.

The supplier’s power production and distribution business — which covers some of its electricity sales through purchases on the wholesale market — didn’t break even last year because of windfall taxes introduced by European governments, it added. 

High energy bills have squeezed consumers and businesses across Europe, forcing governments to spend tens of billions of euros in tax cuts and subsidies to prop up their economies. Several nations, including France, have introduced windfall taxes on electricity sales to finance part of these measures. 

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