Europe’s Big And Expensive Energy Mistake

France plans to renationalize EDF, its giant utility. That doesn’t sound like a big deal because the government already owns 84% of EDF’s outstanding shares. But here is how we read the story. The French government wants to expand nuclear production in France and it also wants EDF to spend big money on the rehabilitation of numerous nuclear power generating stations. It has put pressure on EDF to embrace those policies and we suspect that it could force the issue as the majority shareholder. But a board of directors, with a fiduciary…