the Senate votes to increase taxes on gas and reduce those on electricity

During the debates held on Saturday evening, senators also rejected a provision of the draft budget which aims to remove the tax advantages granted to two biofuels.

The Senate is tackling the energy issue. DWithin the framework of the examination of the budget for 2026 by the upper house, Saturday, November 29, senators voted in the evening to reduce the bills of households heated with electricity, offset by an increase in bills for gas heating. Assuming that the price of gas is “very low”this measure is intended to “support (…) the energy transition”, commented the general budget rapporteur, Jean-François Husson (Les Républicains).

The device, which acts on the “excise”that is to say energy taxes, would reduce the electricity bills of households heated with electricity by 11 to 45 euros per year depending on consumption. The annual bill for households heating with gas could, in return, increase by 12 to 80 euros per year (from 1 to 7 euros per month), according to the Senate Finance Committee. According to this same source, the measure would have no impact on public finances.

The Minister of the Economy, Roland Lescure, considered that the senators’ proposal demonstrated“a desire to promote the consumption of electricity which is both carbon-free and sovereign, to the detriment of gas consumption which is carbon-intensive and non-sovereign”, explaining having issued an opinion of “wisdom” on this proposal, neither for nor against. For the left, this measure “must in no case be to the detriment of those who heat themselves with gas, much more often by constraint than by real choice”, worried the socialist Thierry Cozic.

As the deputies before them had done, the senators also rejected on Saturday evening a provision of the draft budget which aims to eliminate the tax advantages granted to two biofuels, B100 (biodiesel made from rapeseed) and E85 (ethanol). In France, the latter is produced in particular from beets, and used mainly by transporters. Thus, the two measures provoked an outcry from beet and rapeseed producers to industrialists. The FNSEA, a powerful agricultural union, has made it a hobbyhorse.

The Senate’s vote, although identical to that of the National Assembly, does not prejudge the outcome of the debates on this measure, because the finance bill will be examined until mid-December at the earliest in Parliament, between deputies and senators.