The largest electric company in the world – Electricité de France (EDF) – was created on this day. It is an interesting fact that it produces as much as 22% of the electricity of the entire European Union, and has an annual revenue of about 65 billion euros. EDF has about 158,000 employees and supplies approximately 37,000,000 consumers with electricity.
Interestingly, EDF produces as much as 84.7% of its electricity from nuclear power plants. For that it uses 58 active nuclear reactors, which is 13.2% of all the world’s nuclear reactors. Only about 2.7% of its electricity is produced from coal.
This large company was created on this day as a result of the nationalization and merger of around 1,700 smaller French electricity producers. The EDF was granted a monopoly on the production of electricity in France, which it held until 1999. Until the year 2004, the EDF was a state-owned corporation entirely owned by the French government. On that year some of its shares were sold at the Paris Stock Exchange, but the French government still owns about 85% of them.
