These are essential documents for France to accelerate the fight against climate change and the energy transition, which will have concrete consequences on the daily lives of French people, in terms of transport, housing or food. The government submitted to public consultation, on Monday, November 4 and until December 15, the two tools to guide the country’s climate and energy policy: 3my national low carbon strategy (SNBC) and the 3my multiannual energy programming (PPE). The first refers to 2030, the second to 2035 and both aim to achieve carbon neutrality by 2050.
These roadmaps show high ambitions, but doubts remain about France’s ability to deliver on them. Its presentation comes more than a year late due to numerous postponements and the dissolution of the National Assembly in June. In recent months, the High Climate Council has repeatedly warned against “Risks of a decline in the ambition of climate policy” lack of adoption of these texts, which had already been the subject of consultations.
“Go faster and further” : SNBC charts the path towards a reduction in gross greenhouse gas emissions not just 40% but 50% between 1990 and 2030, a consequence of the new European climate ambition. Carbon emissions should therefore be reduced by approximately 5% annually between 2022 and 2030, compared to an average annual reduction of 2% between 2017 and 2022.
“Battle plan”
Despite the good results for 2023 (- 5.8%), progress remains high: France must exceed 373 million tons of CO equivalent2 (MteqCO2), excluding imports, in 2023 at 270 MteqCO2 in 2030. “In the last six months, the decline has slowed a little, which may be due to weather conditions, but shows the need to accelerate even more”acknowledged Agnès Pannier-Runacher. The Minister of Ecological Transition, who launched the public consultation together with François Durovray and Olga Givernet, deputy ministers responsible for Transport and Energy, respectively.
To achieve this, the government details its “battle plan” sector by sector. In transportation, the most polluting (a third of emissions), the Government wants to reduce emissions by 31% between 2022 and 2030, a colossal effort when until now they have stagnated. It has numerous levers between now and the end of the decade, including the progression of electric vehicles (to reach two-thirds of new vehicle sales), charging stations (400,000 public compared to 130,000 currently) and a strong increase in public transport (+25%). But also a doubling of rail freight transport and the bicycle lane network (up to 100,000 km), demand control thanks to teleworking or even a progressive increase in the carbon price for air transport.
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