PDuring the presidential campaign, the IPCC published the reports of the working groups on the impacts of global warming and the actions to be taken to mitigate it. Two alerts on the insufficiency of climate action in the world. This had little impact on the debates in the first round of our presidential election.
Emmanuel Macron’s Marseille speech operates a strange about-face by putting “ecological planning” in the front line, a term borrowed from Jean-Luc Mélenchon’s program. The stated objective is to double the rate of decline in the country’s emissions.
READ ALSOIn Marseille, Macron more “green” life
Priority number one: aim for the right objective!
On the need to accelerate the reduction in emissions, there is no debate. The record of the five-year term is very meager in this area. Environmental NGOs had announced this when filing their appeal against the State in the context of the “Case of the Century”; the Council of State confirmed it in July 2021: France did not reach its emission reduction targets set by the “national low-carbon strategy” (SNBC) at the start of the five-year term. The drop in 2020 emissions resulting from Covid owes nothing to climate policy and 2021 has put us back on the previous trend. Where is this trend leading us?
Since 2005, France has been, beyond short-term fluctuations, on a linear downward trend in greenhouse gas emissions of 8.4 Mt per year. Emmanuel Macron’s five-year term has neither accelerated nor slowed it down. At an unchanged rate, this leads us to emissions of around 330 Mt in 2030. This is 40% below the 1990 level, but far from the European objective of -55% adopted in December 2020.
READ ALSOPeggy Sastre – The climate, absent from the presidential election, for good reasons?
Our climate policy, based on the SNBC, has remained fixed on the 40% objective. The mandate of the Citizens’ Climate Convention was based on this figure, which can be found in the statement of the reasons for the major five-year climate law that it was supposed to inspire. The analyzes of the High Council for the Climate, another climate body created during the five-year term, focus on the reduction objectives of – 40%, none of its publications having addressed the question of the re-evaluation of the objectives to aim for – 55%.
The first task to be carried out within the framework of future ecological planning is therefore to bring our national objective for 2030 into line with the European target of -55%. This work should have been carried out during the quinquennium which is ending. He was not. If the electroshock of the presidential election leads to doing so, it is an excellent thing. The main thing will then be to put in place the measures to achieve the new objective.
What ecological planning?
The Marseille speech announces planning conducted from the top of the executive, with two ministers placed under the authority of the Prime Minister: one in charge of energy planning; the other, ecological territorial planning.
Such an organization is unprecedented to our knowledge. As far as territorial planning is concerned, the big unknown for the next five-year term will be the ability of the executive to find the right synergies with local authorities. From an economic point of view, this implies thinking about the instruments of local taxation and the rules for budgetary transfers between the State and these communities. The right way to integrate the climate is to systematically calculate the value of greenhouse gas emissions generated or reduced by public decisions.
READ ALSOChristian Gollier: “Carbon pricing is the solution”
Regarding energy planning, the main decisions will have to be taken by July 2023, the deadline for the publication of the next orientation law on the climate. The program on Emmanuel Macron’s site details some guidelines that pose three “angrying questions”.
The first is nuclear. The candidate’s program indicates “to continue the construction of the first six new generation nuclear power plants”. Should the voter understand that the construction of these six EPRs has already begun? This ambiguity must be removed as soon as possible and a real debate must be opened. If significant resources are allocated to the construction of these six new EPRs, what resources will be left to maintain and operate the existing nuclear fleet in good safety conditions? And how much will be allocated to make up for the accumulated delay for ten years in renewable energy which makes our country the red lantern of the European Union?
Second annoying issue: carbon pricing. The program supports the European carbon tax on imports. This is a good thing. But if the instrument is effective, why apply it only at the border by renouncing its domestic use? What sense is there in talking about energy planning while “forgetting” the unavoidable role of the carbon price in directing investments towards anything that reduces our dependence on fossil fuels?
The question of lifestyles must finally be tackled head-on, particularly in terms of the mobility of people and goods. When submitting the proposals for the Citizens’ Climate Convention, President Macron immediately rejected the proposal to reduce the speed limit to 110 km / h on the motorways. It was one of the most reliable measures to reduce emissions. To aim for -55%, it is urgent that energy planning integrates the energy demand and sobriety component. Does the candidate Macron now propose to us to do it?
walk on two legs
To accelerate the low-carbon transition and move towards neutrality, we must also count on the agro-ecological transition. Agriculture accounts for a fifth of the country’s greenhouse gas emissions. The agroecological transition will be the agricultural revolution of tomorrow leading, not to produce less, but to produce better. In addition, it must allow farmers to contribute to the storage of carbon in plants and soils.
This second leg of the low-carbon strategy is the great forgotten part of the Marseille speech, as well as the candidate’s program. There is an urgent need to integrate this second component into future ecological planning. Without this second leg, we do not see how the -55% will be achievable in 2030 and even less how the country could claim climate neutrality by 2050.
*Christian de Perthuis is professor of economics at the University of Paris and founder of the “climate economics” chair.