PARIS (Reuters) – The French Minister of Economy and Finance, Bruno Le Maire, warned on Tuesday against the risk of “new trade wars” linked to the decarbonization efforts of certain countries, while calling for international reflection on the subject.
During a conference organized on the occasion of the fiftieth anniversary of the International Energy Agency (IEA), he estimated that countries reducing their CO2 emissions at “a very high financial and economic cost (…) high” risked suffering a form of “unfair competition” from States still largely using fossil fuels and thus benefiting from lower production costs.
“It is urgent now that we put this subject on the table, this risk of major energy divergences between continents, so that we avoid the fight against global warming and climate transition resulting in new trade wars,” he said. declared Bruno Le Maire to journalists.
The minister added that he called for a “coordinated response” at the international level to avoid “production costs which are very low in one place, with a real risk of economic dumping and environmental dumping, and other places where production costs would be very high with a risk of relocation and industrial weakening.
(Reporting by Benjamin Mallet; edited by Jean-Stéphane Brosse)
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