The Minister of Ecological Transition and Territorial Cohesion, Christophe Béchu, at the National Assembly on October 25, 2022 (AFP/Archives/Emmanuel DUNAND)
The Minister for Ecological Transition and Territorial Cohesion, Christophe Béchu, announces 1.2 billion euros in additional aid to local authorities, in the form of a loan, to accelerate the ecological transition.
Vegetate car parks, plant trees in schoolyards or replace the bulbs of street lamps: elected officials will be able to appeal to the deposit and consignment fund (CDC) to request loans, over five years, indicates Mr. Béchu to the JDD .
This loan package is intended to be a complementary device to the “green fund” for accelerating the ecological transition in the territories, announced in August by Prime Minister Elisabeth Borne and today endowed with two billion euros.
“With the added possibility of borrowing at a lower cost, the upstream and downstream aspects of the green fund complement each other”, emphasizes Christophe Béchu.
“If I am mayor and I want to plant trees, I need to know where to plant them, what species to choose… Not all cities have the means to answer these questions”, he explains.
The money released by the Caisse des dépôts will finance this need for expertise of the municipalities, a request from local elected officials, according to the minister and the director of the public bank, Éric Lombard.
The objective is to encourage and help elected officials to speed up measures and projects, by promoting the decentralization of funding. And there is urgency, because “the climate is a loan shark: the longer we wait, the more the climate interest rate increases and the more we will need even higher investments”, estimates Mr. Béchu.
© 2022 AFP
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