CRE issues favorable opinion on decree setting filière-specific price-floor trajectories (2022–2050) for uncapped renewable CR contracts

CRE Deliberation 2026-176 (3 September 2026) issued a favorable opinion on a draft ministerial decree, submitted to CRE on 8 July 2026, that sets three filière-specific price-threshold ('prix seuil') trajectories for 2022–2050 implementing Article 183 of the 2026 Finance Law (Law n°2026-103 of 19 February 2026). The trajectories apply to 1,072 complement-of-remuneration (CR) contracts (8.3 GW) that were subject to payment caps, uncapping them retroactively from 1 January 2022 within the limit of the price seuil: photovoltaic (filière a) from €61/MWh (2022) to €106.20/MWh (2050); wind (filière b) from €63.89 to €111.23/MWh; other filières (filière c) from €76.38 to €132.98/MWh. The PV trajectory is tangent, after 2025, to the 3rd quartile of price trajectories used in bidders' business plans for CRE4 PV Sol tender periods 1-6; wind and other-filière trajectories are derived by applying PPE2 decotes. CRE endorsed both the price level and the decote methodology, while noting an alternative (evolving rather than average) decote approach was also possible.

This resolves a multi-year constitutional and legislative saga (QPC decisions of October 2023 and January 2025) over retroactively uncapping renewable CR contracts, restoring producers' contractual protection against total forfeiture of market gains while still allowing recovery of most windfall revenue captured by EDF Obligation d'Achat during the 2021-2023 price crisis. It reallocates roughly €20 million back to producers out of an estimated €2.5 billion recovered by EDF OA, materially affecting the economics of 1,072 renewable contracts covering 8.3 GW of capacity across three technology filières through 2050.

This is a retrospective revenue-clawback/floor design applied to legacy CfD-like feed-in contracts, addressing a design flaw (contract caps) exposed by extreme price volatility. The price-seuil construction—anchored to the 3rd quartile of historical bidder price forecasts and adjusted via PPE2-derived capture-price decotes per filière—is a bespoke solution intended to proxy 'reasonably anticipated' market prices at contract commitment, balancing constitutional contract-protection requirements against fiscal/ratepayer interests in clawing back windfall gains. The mechanism interacts with EDF OA's role as counterparty and has direct implications for the accounting of support costs (CSPE-related) and modeling of renewable contract cash flows over three decades. Because the trajectory sits above both PPE2 reference paths and the mean/median of historical bidder forecasts, it is more generous to producers than the median historical anticipation, reflecting a policy choice to cover 'the large majority' of producer expectations rather than a central estimate. The choice between a fixed average decote and an evolving decote (flagged by CRE as an open alternative) could still influence the final decree text before adoption.

Article 183 of Law n°2026-103 of 19 February 2026 (Finance Law for 2026); implementing joint ministerial decree ('arrêté') pending adoption after CRE opinion; supersedes prior mechanisms under Article 38 of Law n°2022-1157 (16 August 2022) and Article 230 of Law n°2023-1322 (29 December 2023), both invalidated by Constitutional Council decisions (QPC n°2023-1065 of 26 October 2023 and n°2024-1119/1125 of 24 January 2025)

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