Ithe announcements on May 22 from Elisabeth Borne on the ” action plan “ of the government to reduce carbon emissions sector by sector, after those of the President of the Republic and Bruno Le Maire, Minister of Finance, concerning the “green reindustrialization”, are moving in the right direction, like everything that contributes to strengthening industry in our territory, under the double sign of gaining sovereignty and the “greening” of the economy.
We can obviously wonder about the extent of the means envisaged (in the face of the massive plan of the‘American Inflation Reduction Act), on the limits of a national approach when the right scale is Europe, on financing and on the credibility of a budget impact promised as neutral.
But this political sequence should also be an invitation to reflect on what the “green” industry should be, a notion which in reality remains very vague. The first point to underline is that it cannot be limited to specific sectors. Targeting batteries, solar, wind and heat pumps is very useful.
Consider complete value chains including uses
We must not miss these energy shifts, just as we must decarbonize as a priority heavy industries with high emissions (steel, aluminum, cement). But it is the entire industry, all sectors combined, which must become green. Secondly, this greening cannot be limited to the decarbonization of industrial processes and the energy used. This is a crucial point, but badly perceived.
Green industry will not be a collection of factories emitting less greenhouse gases (GHGs). The paradigm shift to be made is deeper. For what ? First, because the production of the future will increasingly be subject to resource constraints: clean energy, but also water management, interactions with the biosphere, raw materials and components in tension, rare human skills.
Then, you have to look well beyond the factories, to consider the complete value chains, from end to end, upstream and downstream, including uses. The factory from which the final product comes out often represents only 5% to 10% of the total GHG emissions of these chains. It is also necessary to rethink the products themselves, goods and services. We talk a lot about sobriety of use, but sobriety of design is a fundamental issue.
The creation of a less emissive industry
Decarbonizing production to manufacture expensive objects out of non-repairable, non-recyclable materials would be missing the mark. The photo of Biden touting the electric car while driving a monstrous Hummer illustrates this point well. Finally, we must “circularize”, get out as much as possible of linear models that increase our dependencies and waste resources at all stages of the production chains.
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