Commissariat Général au Développement Durable (CGDD) - General Commission on Sustainable Development

Service de la Donnée et des Études Statistiques (SDES) - Sustainable Development Ministerial Statistical Department

Sous Direction des Statistiques de l'Énergie (SDSE) - Energy statistics division

Bureau des Statistiques de la Demande d'Énergie

Tour Séquoia - bureau 20.45 - 1 Place Carpeaux    92 055 La Défense cedex

European statistics on electricity prices for household and final non-household customers.

Internal Eurostat classification system based on annual electricity consumption bands and tax levels.

Household sector and final non-household sector (industry, services, offices, agriculture, etc).

The prices are reported in national currencies per kWh and according to different bands of consumption.

For the household sector, these bands are:

• DA: customers consuming less than 1000 kWh.
• DB: customers consuming 1000 kWh or more but less than 2500 kWh.
• DC: customers consuming 2500 kWh or more but less than 5000 kWh.
• DD: customers consuming 5000 kWh or more but less than 15000 kWh.
• DE: customers consuming 15000 kWh or more.

For the final non-household sector, the bands are:

• IA: customers consuming less than 20 MWh.
• IB: customers consuming 20 MWh or more but less than 500 MWh.
• IC: customers consuming 500 MWh or more but less than 2000 MWh.
• ID: customers consuming 2000 MWh or more but less than 20000 MWh.
• IE: customers consuming 20000 MWh or more but less than 70000 MWh.
• IF: customers consuming 70000 MWh or more but less than 150000 MWh.
• IG: customers consuming 150000 MWh or more.

There exist 2 different levels of disagregation for semestrial and annual prices:

1- Semestrial prices:

These prices are reported twice a year and are divided in 3 levels:

• Level 1 prices: prices excluding taxes and levies.
• Level 2 prices: prices excluding VAT and other recoverable taxes and levies.
• Level 3 prices: prices including all taxes and levies.

2- Annual prices:

These prices are reported once a year together with the data for the second semester and are divided into the following components and taxes:

• Energy and supply: generation, aggregation, balancing energy, supplied energy costs, customer services, after-sales management and other supply costs.
• Network cost: transmission and distribution tariffs, transmission and distribution losses, network costs, after-sale service costs, system service costs, and meter rental and metering costs.
• Value added taxes (VAT): as defined in Council Directive 2006/112/EC.
• Renewable taxes: taxes, fees, levies or charges relating to the promotion of renewable energy sources, energy efficiency and CHP generation.
• Capacity taxes: Taxes, fees, levies or charges relating to capacity payments, energy security and generation adequacy; taxes on coal industry restructuring; taxes on electricity distribution; stranded costs and levies on financing energy regulatory authorities or market and system operators.
• Environmental taxes: taxes, fees, levies or charges relating to air quality and for other environmental purposes; taxes on emissions of CO₂ or other greenhouse gases. This component includes the excise duties.
• Nuclear taxes: taxes, fees, levies or charges relating to the nuclear sector, including nuclear decommissioning, inspections and fees for nuclear installations.
• All other taxes: taxes, fees, levies or charges not covered by any of the previous five categories: support for district heating; local or regional fiscal charges; island compensation; concession fees relating to licences and fees for the occupation of land and public or private property by networks or other devices.

In addition to these elements, the network cost is split into the respective shares of transmission and distribution. The relative share of consumption in the different consumption bands is reported by the countries and used to calculated the single national electricity prices (weighted averages for consumer bands IA-IF and DA-DE) but not published because it could be used to re-calculate some confidential values.

Only the VAT is refundable for non-households

Household and final non-household consumers divided into consumption bands.

The field concerns the main gas and electricity suppliers (as well as carriers and distributors in the case of electricity). It is therefore in the NAF nomenclature codes
35.11Z (Generation of electricity), 35.12Z (Transmission of electricity), 35.13Z (Distribution of electricity), 35.14Z (Trading of electricity), 35.21Z (Production of gaseous fuels), 35.23Z (Trading of gaseous fuels through pipelines).
Suppliers supplying gas or electricity without drawing up invoices to companies in their group are therefore excluded.
Gas transported in liquid form to LNG terminals and then transported by truck in liquid form to customers is excluded.

France excluding overseas departments and Corsica.

Electricity prices data for France are available since 2007.

Not applicable.

Prices are reported in national currency per kWh. However, Eurostat also calculates and publishes the prices in EURO and PPS (purchasing power parity).
Relative shares of sub-component of the network component and consumption volumes are reported in percentages.

For semestrial prices, the reference periods are from January to June for semester 1 and from July to December for semester 2.

For annual prices, the reference period is the whole calendar year (from January to December).

At EU level:

• Regulation (EU) 2016/1952 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 26 October 2016 on European statistics on natural gas and electricity prices and repealing Directive 2008/92/EC (Text with EEA relevance).
• Commission Implementing Regulation (EU) 2017/2169 of 21 November 2017 concerning the format and arrangements for the transmission of European Statistics on natural gas and electricity prices pursuant to Regulation (EU) 2016/1952 of the European Parliament and of the Council (Text with EEA relevance).
• Commission Implementing Decision (EU) 2018/1734 of 14 November 2018 granting derogations to the Federal Republic of Germany, the Kingdom of Spain, the Italian Republic and the Republic of Cyprus as regards the provision of statistics pursuant to Regulation (EU) 2016/1952 of the European Parliament and of the Council (notified under document C(2018) 7465) (Text with EEA relevance).
• Commission Implementing Regulation (EU) 2019/803 concerning the content of quality reports on European statistics on natural gas and electricity prices pursuant to Regulation (EU) 2016/1952 of the European Parliament and of the Council (Text with EEA relevance).

At national level:

• Given the favorable opinion of the National Council for Statistical Information  (CNIS), this survey, recognized as being of general interest and of statistical quality, is mandatory. Visa No. 2022S034EQ from the Minister of the Economy and Finance, valid for the year 2022.

At EU level:

• Eurostat does not share the data collected with other organisation appart from its usual dissemination chanel (Eurostat's database, statistic explained articles and press or news release) .

At national level:

• Data is sent to eurostat.
• Every quarter an update of aggregate results is sent to the IEA (quarterly statistics- Energy prices and taxes)

At EU level:

• Regulation (EC) No 223/2009 of the European Parliament and of the Council, of 11 March 2009, on the transmission of data subject to statistical confidentiality to the Statistical Office of the European Communities.

At national level:

• Under Article 6 of Law No. 51-711 of 7 June 1951, as amended, on the obligation, co-ordination and confidentiality of statistics, the information transmitted in reply to this questionnaire shall in no circumstances be used for purposes of tax control or economic repression. Article 7 of the aforementioned law also states that any failure to reply or a knowingly inaccurate response may result in the application of an administrative fine. This questionnaire is confidential and is addressed to the Energy Statistics Sub-Directorate

Published data should not allow identification of single consumers.

For residential prices, we apply the rules of France statistical secret on companies. No results are published if it concerns fewer than three suppliers or no data for which a single company represents 85% or more of the value obtained.

For non residential prices, we apply the rules of France Energy Code (Article L142-9).  No results are published if it concerns fewer than three consumers.

No release calendar is published.

There is no calendar.

Not applicable

Electricity prices in France are published on a semestrial basis on Eurostat's website.

Every quarter an update of aggregate results is sent to the IEA (quarterly statistics – Energies prices and taxes).

The results are also available on the database website of the ministry.

No national press release related to the data.

Annual publications on the electricity price:

Datalab essential “Electricity prices in France and the European Union in 2020” (pdf format): (since june 2021)

Datalab essential “Electricity prices in France and the European Union in 2019” (pdf format)

Datalab essential “Electricity prices in France and the European Union in 2018” (pdf format)

The results are available in a statistical database on the website of the ministry as well as in a spreadsheet attached to the annual publication.

The number of consultations of the prices data in the statistical database is unknown.

We don't give public access to microdata.

However,researchers have the possibility to access individual data under the rules of Law No. 51-711 of 7 June 1951, as amended, on the obligation, co-ordination and confidentiality of statistics (however, no demand has been made in the recent years).

None

A methodological notice is included in the publication : Datalab essential “Electricity prices in France and the European Union in 2020”.

Description of the survey, Methodology, Data collection, Questionnaire, Results are described on the following web page:

https://www.statistiques.developpement-durable.gouv.fr/enquete-semestrielle-sur-la-transparence-des-prix-du-gaz-et-de-lelectricite-en-europe?list-enquete=true

A methodological notice is included in the publication : Datalab essential “Electricity prices in France and the European Union in 2020”

A methodology is attached (in a separate file) to the publication Datalab essential “Electricity prices in France and the European Union in 2019”

Not significant

No document related to quality is available

As part of the application for the label of conformity and the compulsory nature, we have drafted a dossier for the label committee.

No quality management system currently in place.

We have a quite high confidence in the accuracy of these statistics. Indeed, the results appear globally consistent with other sources (regulated  tariffs, prices declared by industrial customers in the annual survey on industrial energy consumption…).

However, we identify some difficulties and weaknesses. First of all, the questionnaire appears quite complex for suppliers to fill in and may require estimations from them. Therefore, ensuring accuracy requires deep checks of the questionnaires and, in some cases, quite long discussions with suppliers. More specifically, some difficulties arise from the fact that  the survey questions customer invoices.

Clients can change band from one semester to another, which may cause a tracking problem. Besides, the annual consumption of new customers or outgoing customers is unknown and requires assumptions. We have given the following instruction : the allocation of the consumption band for incoming and outgoing customers must be made by estimating the annual consumption of the customer ; in the absence of other methods, this estimate may be made pro rata temporis of the time of presence as a customer.

Moreover, billing may differ from actual consumption, because of call / provisioning, regularization, refunds or non-billing. It causes inconsistencies in particular on taxes, that we correct automatically.

SDES

- Consolidation of the monetary accounts of gas and electricity
- Databases available on the ministry website
- Annual publications on the price of gas and electricity.

IEA

- Quarter update of aggregate results ( quarterly statistics –Energies prices and taxes)

INSEE

- INSEE follows results published on the online database to compare with their own results

 All Publics

- Inform the average price level of the entire market, in a context of development of market offers.

Additional information that would be expected :

- Differentiation between market and regulated prices.
- Standard deviations of prices for different bands in order to assess the dispersion of prices around the average.

A users' committee meets once every two years to review developments in the survey. The last meeting was held on May 20, 2019.

Decision Record:

- Annual consumption of incoming and outgoing: The allocation of the consumption band for incoming and outgoing customers must be made by estimating the annual consumption of the customer. In the absence of other methods, this estimate may be made pro rata temporis of the time of presence as a customer.

- Taxes for residential: Residentials do not benefit from a tax reduction. Therefore the TICFE for the residential ones must be informed at the maximum normative rate.

- Taxes for non-residential: Non-residential units are not subject to the TLCFE for a power strictly greater than 250 kVA. As a result, the TLCFE must be reported as zero for the non-residential units of IE, IF and IG.

The dataset complies with the current regulation.

We transmit everything requested.

Potential errors:

- Error of the provider:

- Bad filter over the period

- Bad consideration of new and outgoing customers in the assignment of consumption bands

- Error after taking account of payment deposit and not on a volume actually invoiced in the period

- Error in the approval of the supplier's invoices

- Error input in the online application

We survey the suppliers with the highest market shares, until the sum of the market shares exceeds 95%.  the sampling error is considered negligible.

No precisions measures are available.

Information is included in the sub-concepts S.13.3.1-S.13.3.5.

Overall, the coverage error should be moderate. Though, it could be relatively more important for highest non residential bands than for the other ones.

There is no over-coverage.

100% of the data come from the survey.

Suppliers may have difficulties to aggregate bills by annual consumption bands because their customers are classified by contract power.

See 13.3.3.1

In the second half of 2021, all suppliers responded for electricity except five, with low consumption volumes.

The item non-response rate for electricity is zero for the second half-year of 2021.

There is no processing error because it is fully automated. Suppliers respond in an online questionnaire. Then a management application allows the extraction of detailed results. In the end a program accrues the results and completes the questionnaire for Eurostat.

Not Applicable.

Electricity providers that participate in the national data collection are requested to provide the electricity price data within 2,5 months after the reference period. After arrival, the statistical office checks the micro-data for correctness, consistency and completeness and national averages are calculated and reported to Eurostat during the third month after the reference period

As the deadline set by Eurostat is always respected, we systematically submit our results three months after the end of the reference period.

There was no second sending to Eurostat of the results for the second half of 2021. If we want to make a second sending, we ask Eurostat for a new deadline.

The legal deadline for submitting the questionnaires is the end of the third month after the reference period.

We sent the aggregated answer in time for both semesters of 2021, because there were no significant corrections from the suppliers, and therefore no second sending to Eurostat either.

For the 2nd semester of 2020, we sent the aggregated answer 8 days after the deadline, because there were significant corrections from the suppliers.

For the 1st semester of 2020, we sent the aggregated answer in time, because there were no significant corrections from the suppliers.

For the 2nd semester of 2019, we sent the aggregated answer 24 days after the deadline, because there were significant corrections from the suppliers.

For the 1st semester of 2019, we sent the aggregated answer 36 days after the deadline, because there were significant corrections from the suppliers. 

Until the first half of 2021, the prices sent to Eurostat only concerned mainland France except Corsica. Since the second half of 2021, the prices relate to the whole of France except Mayotte, that is to say metropolitan France including Corsica, Guadeloupe, Martinique, French Guyana and Réunion.

Not applicable

Until the first half of 2021, the prices sent to Eurostat only concerned mainland France except Corsica. Since the second half of 2021, the prices relate to the whole of France except Mayotte, that is to say metropolitan France including Corsica, Guadeloupe, Martinique, French Guyana and Réunion.

For France, the annual price is calculated as the average of the half-yearly prices beetween 2007 and 2016, while it is directly estimated from the annual data supplied by the suppliers from 2017 on.

Not applicable

Not applicable

Not applicable

There is a small difference between the annual price and the average weighted half-yearly price. The annual price is filled in the second half of the year and in the meantime, most suppliers have changed the price and volume of the first semester in the second semester. We give suppliers the possibility of modifying first half prices and volumes during the second half of the year.

Internal costs

A survey manager and an office manager for a total of 0.9 FTE.

In addition, a computer developer is requested each semester for the production of the online questionnaire and the management application. As well as to improve them.

No internal costs other than manpower

Costs for suppliers

The answer is facilitated by an online questionnaire in the form of successive tables of figures to be completed. The accuracy of the figures requested requires the implementation of requests, the support of IT departments, back offices and sometimes accountants.

Suppliers are forced to keep the collection deadlines. Suppliers must deliver the figures no more than three months after the end of the semester while invoices are not always available for the requested period.

We have informed suppliers that it will be possible to modify the data for the first semester when entering the data for the second semester and the annual. This will promote coherence between half-year prices and annual prices. As a result, online Semester 1 questionnaires will be automatically opened for online collection during the second semester collection.

Suppliers will have to revalidate the online questionnaire of the first semester during the collection of the second semester with modifications or not.

Suppliers can revise their 1st semester prices at the same time as they enter their 2nd semester prices and their annual prices, six months later.

Household electricity prices collection: 0.0256913023090026

Non-household electricity prices collection: 0.00231858

Selection of suppliers from the lists communicated semi-annually by the Energy Regulatory Commission.

Inquiry of suppliers representing the largest market shares until reaching the 95% market threshold.

List remains fairly stable from one year to the next: The historical suppliers (EDF for electricity) retain a significant share of the market, especially among households.

New suppliers often start with a small market share.

Twice a year.

We send an e-mail at the beginning of the collection to the suppliers and we send a reminder e-mail.
Responses must be submitted in an on-line survey.

A management application tracks the progress of collection (indicates questionnaire started and questionnaire completed).

When necessary, we discuss the consistency of their answer on the phone.

We control the order of magnitude of prices and volumes of each supplier compared to previous semesters.

For each band a test checks that 2 * semester volume / Number of customer is included in the limits of the annual consumption interval.

In the second half of the year, we check for each consumption band the average weighted half-yearly price of semi-annual volumes is close to the annual price.

We check that the taxes are about the normative value.

The control that Price without tax is less or equal to Price excluding VAT less or equal to Price with VAT takes place when the supplier enters his data.

For the main suppliers, we examine the evolutions from the previous year.

For the annual calculation only the questionnaires for which the bands of consumption of the prices excluding taxes are filled in the first and second semester are considered as well as the volumes of the first and second semester.

- The consumption bands of suppliers who have not entered the price of the supply or the cost of the network costs are excluded

- Taxes locales for the final consummation of electricity (TLCFE) forced to 0 band IE, IF and IG.

- Internal Tax on Final Electricity Consumption (TICFE) forced to 22,5 € / MWh in 2019, 2020 and 2021 for residential customers.

- If some suppliers fail to submit data, they will be imputed as the average of the other suppliers data of the band.

- If a supplier does not submit the invoiced VAT, it will be calculated using the difference of the supplier's half-yearly between prices including and excluding VAT, weighted by its half-yearly volumes. If these prices are not available, the VAT will be imputed with the average VAT value of the market band.

not significant

No adjustment

Seasonable adjustments are not carried out.