"The tariff will almost double in the coming two years as there will be more renewable power, especialy wind power," said Michel Massoni, Commission de Regulation de l'Energie's (CRE) director of grid access told Reuters.

Previously, the surcharge was only imposed on French producers and consumers of imported electricity in France's open market, to compensate state-owned Electricite de France and other distributors.

The surcharge aims to collect 1,461 million euros in 2003 to finance policies to support renewable energy and cogeneration and compensate for the higher costs of supplying electricity to France's remote consumers.

In 2002, 1,306 million euros were raised through a surcharge of 3.00 euros per MWh.

By the CRE's calculations, the figure is set to rise as the French government aims to boost renewable energy sources to account for 21 percent of consumption by 2010, from about 15 percent at the moment.

It has set a ceiling on the surcharge to 5.50 euros per MWh, a level it expects to see reached by 2004.

But it said in a best-case scenario, France could have 3,000 megawatts (MW) of wind power production by 2006.

Although Europe's top electricity exporter, France is still only the region's fourth smallest generator of wind power since it currently relies on nuclear reactors to supply nearly 80 percent of its needs.

By contrast, one single nuclear reactor produces 1,000 MW.

France has about 80 MW of wind power generation, just a fraction of Europe's wind powerhouse Germany with around 9,000 MW of windpower capacity.