The Price Tag: Around 20 Cents Per Kilowatt-Hour
Marseille residents currently pay approximately €0.20 per kilowatt-hour (about $0.22 USD) for electricity under France's regulated tariff system. This rate applies uniformly across the entire country, whether you live in a Parisian apartment, a farmhouse in Provence, or a flat overlooking Marseille's Vieux-Port, the price is identical.
This wasn't always the case. During the 2022-2023 energy crisis triggered by Russia's invasion of Ukraine, French electricity prices spiked dramatically. But in February 2025, the government implemented a 15% reduction that brought bills back toward pre-crisis levels. By August 2025, additional tax cuts pushed the base rate down to €0.1952 per kilowatt-hour.
French consumers can choose between single-rate pricing or a peak/off-peak structure. The latter offers roughly €0.17/kWh during off-peak hours, typically late night through early morning, with a newer afternoon window from 11 AM to 5 PM designed to absorb excess solar generation. Peak hours cost around €0.21/kWh.
For context, France's household electricity rates sit slightly above the European Union average but remain well below Germany's €0.38/kWh. French businesses fare even better, paying about €0.15/kWh, 18% below the EU average, giving companies in Marseille a competitive edge over their continental rivals.
The System: State-Owned Giants With Clear Separation
Understanding how Marseille gets its power requires grasping France's distinctive utility structure, which separates the companies that move electricity from those that sell it.
Enedis operates as the distribution network manager, maintaining the wires, poles, transformers, and the 35 million smart meters (called Linky) that track French electricity consumption. Despite being a subsidiary of EDF, Enedis functions with legal independence to ensure all electricity suppliers, not just its parent company, receive fair grid access. When the lights go out in Marseille, Enedis crews respond.
EDF (Électricité de France) handles generation and retail supply. As the "historical supplier," EDF remains the only company authorized to offer France's regulated tariff, though market liberalization in 2007 opened the door to competitors like TotalEnergies, Engie, and Vattenfall. Most French households stick with EDF, though alternative suppliers sometimes offer savings of 15-17% below regulated rates.
The critical difference from American utilities: both companies are now entirely state-owned. In June 2023, the French government completed EDF's full renationalization, purchasing all remaining private shares for €9.7 billion. The company had been partially private since its 2005 IPO, but political will to control this strategic asset, particularly its fleet of 56 nuclear reactors generating 64% of French electricity, pushed Paris to bring it fully under state control.
An independent regulator, the Commission de Régulation de l'Énergie (CRE), sets tariffs and ensures fair competition. Board governance at EDF includes government-appointed directors, employee representatives from major unions, and oversight committees covering everything from nuclear safety to corporate responsibility.
Local Energy Projects: From Seawater Heating to Solar Rooftops
While Marseille depends on the national grid dominated by nuclear power, the city is aggressively developing local renewable energy projects that could reshape its energy profile over the coming decade.
The most ambitious initiative is a district heating network approved in 2023 that will eventually serve 50,000 homes, primarily in northern Marseille. What makes this project distinctive is its energy source: the Mediterranean Sea itself. Using a technique called thalassothermie, the system extracts thermal energy from seawater to heat and cool buildings. Combined with solar thermal panels and biomass, the network will draw 79% of its energy from renewable sources. Connected households can expect roughly 15% reductions in their energy bills.
On the organizational front, Marseille has established new public entities dedicated to renewable development. The SPL Énergies de Provence, created in April 2024 with €3.5 million in capital, is jointly owned by the Aix-Marseille-Provence metropolitan government and the Bouches-du-Rhône department. Its mission: installing solar panels and other renewable systems on public buildings across the region.
The city government is also creating its own Société d'Économie Mixte, a public-private partnership structure common in France, focused on accelerating renewable deployment. The goal is to triple local clean energy production within ten years, ultimately generating 38% of metropolitan consumption from local renewable sources by 2030.
Meanwhile, Enedis is investing €250 million through 2030 in its "Réseau Marseille" infrastructure program. While primarily focused on reliability, reducing average outage times from 75 minutes to 40 minutes annually, the initiative includes creating 160 megawatts of shore power capacity at the port, allowing cruise ships and cargo vessels to plug into clean grid electricity rather than running diesel generators while docked.
Two Sister Cities, Two Energy Philosophies
The contrast between San Diego and Marseille's approaches to electricity reflects deeper differences in how Americans and French view essential services, and the results suggest the French may have figured something out.
San Diego operates within California's complicated energy landscape: investor-owned SDG&E faces competition from community choice aggregators, rooftop solar has transformed thousands of homes into mini power plants, and electricity rates among the highest in the nation spark regular political battles. San Diegans routinely pay $0.40 to $0.50 per kilowatt-hour, roughly double what Marseillais pay, while navigating a fragmented system where innovation often means complexity and savings remain elusive for average ratepayers.
Marseille's state-controlled model delivers clear advantages. Residents pay half what their San Diego counterparts do, with rates standardized nationwide so geography doesn't determine your electricity bill. When energy markets went haywire during the 2022-2023 crisis, the French government absorbed the shock through EDF rather than passing volatile wholesale prices directly to consumers. The 15% rate reduction in February 2025 demonstrated something American utilities rarely achieve: prices that actually go down.
State ownership also appears to enable bolder innovation. Marseille's seawater thermal heating network, the €250 million grid modernization program, and the coordinated push for 38% local renewable generation by 2030, these ambitious projects proceed without the quarterly earnings pressure that constrains investor-owned utilities. When EDF commits to building port charging infrastructure or Enedis pledges to cut outage times nearly in half, they're executing long-term public policy, not maximizing shareholder returns.
The Accountability Gap
Critics of state-owned utilities often warn of political interference. But here's the uncomfortable truth: at least political interference comes with democratic accountability. French citizens can vote out leaders who mismanage EDF. Marseille residents have representation.
San Diegans? Not so much. SDG&E is regulated by the California Public Utilities Commission, an appointed body that consumer advocates increasingly accuse of regulatory capture. The pattern is troubling: SDG&E posted record profits of $936 million in 2023 while one in five of its customers fell behind on their bills. When automatic mechanisms would have reduced the utility's guaranteed profit rate, SDG&E filed to block those adjustments. And the CPUC largely obliged.
Just last week, the CPUC voted 4-1 to set SDG&E's authorized return on equity at 9.93%, a guaranteed profit margin on infrastructure investments that every non-utility stakeholder in the proceeding argued was too high. Consumer advocates like former Sempra executive Mark Ellis, now testifying for ratepayer groups, say the return should be closer to 6%. He estimates that profit margins plus pass-through taxes account for roughly one-quarter of Californians' utility bills.
The Commission had proposed slightly deeper cuts in its November draft but backtracked after utility pressure. As one advocate put it: "We haven't touched their profits for decades, and what has it gotten us? Really expensive electricity and a very brittle system."
Meanwhile, San Diego Mayor Todd Gloria, the same mayor who signed the Marseille sister city agreement, wrote to the CPUC opposing the rate approval and announced the city will continue analyzing the feasibility of forming a public power entity. When your own mayor is exploring alternatives to your investor-owned utility, something has gone wrong.
Learning From Our Sister City
The French system may involve political influence, but citizens can change politicians. San Diegans pay among the highest electricity rates in America to a company earning record profits, regulated by commissioners they didn't elect, with limited recourse beyond public comment periods that rarely change outcomes. That's not a market delivering efficiency; it's a monopoly extracting rents with a government seal of approval.
As San Diego formalizes its relationship with Marseille, perhaps the most valuable exchange won't be cultural festivals or trade missions. It might be a simple question: what would it look like to run electricity as a public service rather than a profit center?
Electricity prices current as of late 2025. Exchange rates fluctuate.