The failure of the “mandatory” carbon footprint, a symbol of contempt for climate issues

Super profits, super carbon dioxide emissions, but still a super environmental promise for the future. The shipowner CMA CGM, which generated a historic net profit of 24.9 billion dollars (23.5 billion euros) in 2022, is also a major emitter of greenhouse gases (GHG), such as entire shipping industry. However, the company claims to aim for “zero carbon” in 2050 to make its contribution to the fight against global warming.

A credible commitment? In France, a law has precisely required, for more than ten years, large companies to quantify their GHG emissions, to publish them on the site of the Ecological Transition Agency (Ademe), and to establish a actions to reduce them. But CMA CGM did not. Asked by The worldthe shipowner claims to have planned to comply with the exercise soon.

The most profitable French company in 2022 is far from being an isolated case. Barely a third of the approximately five thousand private or public organizations concerned by this legal obligation complied with it in 2021. A discrepancy which testifies as much to the failure of a system as to the apathy of the actors concerned in the face of environmental transition. , even though the sixth report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), published on Monday 20 March, once again underlines the urgency of acting quickly to contain global warming.

A largely ignored obligation

Attractive on paper, the obligation to carry out a GHG assessment has not kept its promises, in the first place because it is mostly ignored. Thus, 65% of the 4,970 organizations subject to this obligation did not do so, according to the Ademe count for the year 2021. The situation has even deteriorated, since they were only 40% recalcitrant in 2013.

While very large companies mainly play the game, The world found that some of them were still missing at the beginning of January 2023, during the last update of the Ademe database. Among them: Dassault Systèmes, Leclerc, Eiffage, Vivendi… and the Le Monde group.

These “oversights” are facilitated by the leniency of the State, which is hardly shown offensive in the implementation of this regulation which entered into force ten years ago. Agents from the regional directorates for the environment, planning and housing (DREAL) are indeed responsible for monitoring compliance with the law, but the penalties, although reinforced by the 2019 climate law, remain derisory (a simple fine of 10,000 euros, increased to 20,000 euros in the event of repeated infringements), or even non-existent. Asked about the number of organizations sanctioned for not having made a GHG assessment, the Ministry of Ecological Transition explains that “the controls have essentially had an educational and incentive purpose, until now”.

However, the recalcitrant companies do not seem convinced to date of the importance of the approach. To justify its absence of a GHG report, Vivendi refers, for example, to similar data that it has published on other platforms, such as the Carbon Disclosure Project, managed by an NGO, or in its annual report. However, the level of precision of these publications is often much lower than that of the data requested by the public platform of Ademe. Vivendi is happy to assert that the data is “calculated with specialized companies”, the information published in the annual reports of the companies is often not very detailed and often does not allow to compare the companies of a sector with each other. Nearby WorldVivendi assures however that it will publish an initial balance sheet in Ademe format “by the end of 2023”.

Local authorities often lagging behind

The public sphere itself has not really set an example in this regard. Starting with the regions, whose agents are nevertheless responsible for enforcing the law. According to our survey, only six of the eighteen French regions were up to date with their obligation at the start of 2023: Bourgogne-Franche-Comté, Brittany, Centre-Val de Loire, Grand Est, Normandy, Reunion…

The answers of the recalcitrant actors interviewed by The world show that local authorities are often just as late as companies in their reflections. Thus, Laurent Wauquiez, president of the Rhône-Alpes-Auvergne region, defends himself from non-compliance with the law in 2023 by invoking the context of the merger of the regions (although which took place at the beginning of 2016). Its press service, however, ensures that a ” reflection “ was engaged on the subject for “Develop a regional decarbonization strategy” and publish a report during 2023. The Ile-de-France region, chaired by Valérie Pécresse, indicates that a first GHG report was completed in March 2022, without being made public: the local authority has decided to wait until this year to publish an overview of the latest regulatory developments.

The balance sheet is hardly better at the level of the departments, less than half of which have published a carbon balance sheet. It is however more positive on the side of the big cities and metropolises: among the ten most populated in France, only Nantes (which claims to be in the process of publishing its balance sheet) and Marseille are out of the nails.

Interviewed for the Ademe assessment, organizations that did not meet their reporting obligation in 2021 most often cited the lack of human or financial resources and the complexity and length of the exercise. Justifications that apply to both the public and the private sector.

Too often imprecise and incomplete work

But the problem does not stop with these recalcitrants. Even among the 35% of “good students”, a good part of the published GHG assessments turn out in reality to be largely unusable, due to their lack of precision. The exercise has also long been distorted by the fact that the reporting obligation was restricted to the direct and indirect emissions of the companies concerned – we speak, in the jargon, of “scopes”. In the example of a car manufacturer, scope 1 includes the GHG emissions directly from its factories and scope 2 adds the indirect emissions related to the energy consumption of its production units (those of the power plants that produce its electricity, for example).

Finally comes scope 3, which covers GHG emissions related to products and services purchased by the company or through the end use of its products. In the example of our automotive company, this scope includes in particular the GHGs emitted during the production and transport of the materials used in the manufacture of vehicles. It also takes into account the emissions of vehicles between the factory and their point of sale, and above all those that they will generate while driving.

From this example, we understand that scope 3 is, by far, the largest source of emissions in most sectors of activity, with the exception of large industrial sites or the extraction of fossil energy . This is why carbon balance sheets must in principle take these factors into account, in order to highlight the expenditure of an activity using fossil fuels. But French law has long made its inclusion in GHG assessments optional. An anomaly that was only corrected at 1^er January.

Thus, many organizations have so far given up quantifying their entire carbon footprint, for lack of being obliged to do so. Scope 3 was ignored in almost half of the balance sheets filed with Ademe between 2018 and 2021 – in particular by major CO emitters₂such as Total Energies, Esso or Lafarge.

Even among the “good students”, the quality of the exercise is variable. On average, companies provide information on only 4.6 of the 15 scope 3 emission items, focusing on the easiest to fill in, rather than the most substantial. Among the items most often filled in, we find, for example, business trips and purchases of products or services. Very few organizations have, conversely, estimated CO emissions₂ related to the use of their products.

For Juliette Decq, a specialist in these issues at the firm Carbone 4, French regulations “is a necessary first building block, but very insufficient. In any case, it is a subject that must go through regulations, otherwise companies will not get started ».

A reading of the action plans that accompany these reports shows that this reflection is still insufficiently engaged. A good number of companies thus content themselves with making small gestures to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions. “Equip 100% of our stores with interior lighting with LED sources” (Adidas), “educate employees about energy saving” (Groupama Mediterranean), “designate an ambassador for sobriety and the climate in each store” (The Great Recreation)… so many general and basic actions that do not require any particular thought to be adopted.

More broadly, these measures seem insufficient to be in line with government objectives for the years to come. France must indeed reduce its emissions by 55% by 2030 compared to 1990, whereas they only fell by 20% between 1990 and 2019. The laborious deployment of the GHG report, still in the minority after more than a decade, illustrates well how high the step is.

Beyond the figures, according to her, carbon accounting must be accompanied by in-depth reflection within companies: “Before embarking on an action plan, you have to think about the starting pointanalyzes Juliette Decq. Some activities will have to be created, for example in the reuse economy, and others will have to disappear. This is the crux of the story. »