From what I gather, it's not just France.
Since the outbreak of the war in Ukraine the price of gas and electric power in the European Union has gone up enormously.
https://jacquesmattheij.com/drastically-reducing-our-powerbi...
Since the outbreak of the war in Ukraine the price of gas and electric power in the European Union has gone up enormously.
https://jacquesmattheij.com/drastically-reducing-our-powerbi...
We still use too much gas to heat our homes, but I believe if we had had the capacity expected we could have reduced that substantially by having people use electric heaters without raising everyone’s electricity bill hugely .. but alas not enough plants online have lead to France feeling the pain like everyone else.
You can actually smell a difference. I live in non-industrial North of the country basically in the country side. Nearest town has 5k people and even here when temperatures dropped I could smell shitty coal being burned when I went to town. I know the smell because I have a hobby forge and I use (good) coal sometimes. I have to say this is the first time in my life I could actually smell it in the air used by other people here. This is a heavily forested region and most people used wood as fuel. However with current prices and availability, coal (and shitty one too) is back.
As for prices I can assure you it could've been much worse if not for the state subsidies that were put in place very quickly and the state bringing in coal on massive ships from abroad. I heat my house with wood pellets and a "smart" furnace that has very high efficiency. Also I have a benefit of good insulation. In previous years I would pay about $500 for a year's supply of fuel (this is just house heating, water for bathrooms is heated with electricity). This year I bought before the majority of the price increases hit and I paid $1200 (this is for 2.5 tons of the "premium" version of the stuff). Then I got $800 back from the state as heating subsidy. So overall it cost me less than in an usual year.
Then there is the state sanctioned freeze on the price of gas for private people (not businesses) and same for electricity until you use up 2MWh.Imagine how bad it would be without it. Still this cost is well worth it.