France to Open Up Hydropower Sector

France has decided to open up its hydropower sector to competition after years of delays and against the wishes of many Socialist MPs, former energy minister Delphine Batho said on Monday.

Many utilities and big electricity consumers have expressed an interest in France's hydroelectric sector, which is dominated by former state monopoly EDF, given that the cost of facilities that can run for decades has mostly been recouped.

But voices in the Socialist government, in office since May 2012, opposed opening up the sector, arguing that the French taxpayer, who financed hydropower stations through their taxes, should continue to benefit from the cheap electricity.

Batho - who was dismissed by President Francois Hollande last July - pointed in her opinion piece on a newspaper website to a widely unnoticed line in the government's so-called national reform programme dated April 23 that reads: "a competitive renewal of hydropower operating licences will be favoured."

"Not only is the sale of the family's jewels being prepared without any public debate, but we're squandering a national treasure that is key for a successful energy transition," Batho said on Monday in an opinion piece published on Les Echos' website.

"I opposed that as a minister, I'll oppose that as an MP," she wrote, highlighting the difficulties Prime Minister Manuel Valls may face in appeasing rebel Socialist lawmakers who are voting on the spending plan on Tuesday.

A spokeswoman for the current energy minister, Segolene Royal, did not immediately return a request for comment.

France's audit court urged the government last September to pursue a much delayed plan to open part of its hydropower sector to competition in order to provide a source of state revenue.

While bidding for the rights to operate capacity totalling 5,300 megawatts, the equivalent of five small nuclear reactors, was supposed to take place between 2010 and 2013 and contracts awarded between 2013 and 2015, none of the tenders have yet been launched.

But the audit court said last June that "delays and hesitation" from the government were causing an increasing loss in potential earnings for state coffers.

In 2010, over 400 hydroelectric concessions accounted for 24,300 MW, nearly half the capacity of France's 58 nuclear power plants and 20 percent of France's electricity capacity.

Some 80 percent of state-owned concessions are now managed by EDF and 12 percent indirectly by GDF Suez.

When EDF became a corporation in 2004, the European Union requested the opening up of some capacity to competition and the end of EDF's preferential treatment.

Swedish energy firm Vattenfall, which had formed a consortium with French train operator SNCF, has closed its Paris office, which had dedicated a team of 10 people to prepare for a competitive opening of hydropower concessions.

This has left, among others, German utility E.ON and Hydrocop Concessions, a group of eight energy distributors in France, to bid for contracts if the government does liberalise the sector.

(Reporting by Michel Rose, editing by William Hardy)