法国电力集团

Globalization, the fast growth of energy needs, the opening of the markets, the change in the needs of customers: the power industry has entered an era of far-reaching change. The EDF Group has taken an active part in these changes through its industrial investments in the emerging countries, by extending its range of energy and service offers via specialised subsidiaries and by means of rapid development within its new internal market, Europe. Key Dates: The French government nationalizes its electrical industry, bringing about the creation of Electricité de France. The European Union decides to open all markets to competition for electricity. France's second largest company, Electricité de France (EDF), is a state-owned utility involved in all phases of electricity: generation, transmission, and distribution. The bulk of EDF's immense generating system is dependent on the world's largest nuclear power program. As the European Union opens borders to competition for electricity, EDF has increased its efforts to become a global provider of power, even as it tries to free itself from 50 years of entrenched monopolistic attitudes and political entanglements. Before 1946, the French electrical industry was in the hands of a large number of private companies, providing production, distribution, and other services connected with the industry under a variety of agreements with local authorities and regional administrations. The system had developed with no centralized planning following the appearance of the first distribution networks in 1884. By the outbreak of World War II, electricity was provided by about 200 companies engaged in production, another 100 in transport, and about 1,150 involved in distribution. An estimated 20,000 concession-holders provided equipment and other services to these companies. The system was irrational and inefficient, going as far as having two companies providing electricity to the same place, such as in the Lyon region, where two companies competed directly, one selling alternating current from its hydroelectric plant, the other offering direct current produced at a coal-fired thermal station. The main reason for the government's decision to consolidate the electrical industry into a single nationalized utility was its determination to speed up industrialization and urbanization after World War II. Defeat by the German forces had revealed the weaknesses of the French economy, and there was a widespread agreement on the need to modernize what was still a largely rural, agricultural society. The electric industry was central to these plans for industrialization, and the government regarded a single utility as the best way of providing the resources for the swift increase in productive capacity that would be needed, as well as overcoming the inefficiencies of the old system. The decision to establish a nationalized utility, rather than a private one, was largely due to the influence of Marcel Paul, a Communist, who, in November 1945, seven months after being freed from the Nazi concentration camp at Buchenwald, was appointed minister for industrial production by the head of the government, Charles De Gaulle. Besides strong technical arguments for nationalization as the most efficient means of rationalizing the industry, Paul brought a firm ideological commitment to nationalization, as well as the bitter enmity of the French political left toward the private electricity owners, who had often funded right-wing political organizations and were widely suspected of collaborating with the Nazi occupiers during the war. Paul's work toward nationalization paid off on April 8, 1946, when the National Assembly voted almost unanimously in favor of the law nationalizing electricity and gas. Given the task of dramatically increasing France's output of electricity, the new organization immediately began work on a massive program of hydroelectric plant construction, which was the method favored by Marcel Paul