2023-05-22 12:18:53
Elisabeth Borne presents her plan on Monday to accelerate the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions in France by 2030. EMMANUEL DUNAND / AFP
Commissioned by Élisabeth Borne from the economist Jean Pisani-Ferry, it underlines that “decarbonisation will call for additional investment” of 66 billion euros per year.
The massive investments necessary for the climate transition will slow growth and increase public debt, according to a report published Monday by France Strategy, which plans to tax the financial assets of the wealthiest households. This report, commissioned by Elisabeth Borne from economist Jean Pisani-Ferry, is published as the head of government presents her plan on Monday to accelerate the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions in France by 2030.
The document emphasizes that decarbonization will rest at 85% “on the substitution of capital for fossil fuels”, whether to create networks of charging stations, insulate buildings or build new nuclear power plants, and only at around 15% on sobriety efforts, such as lowering the temperature of heated rooms or moving less.
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“To do in ten years what we have struggled to do in 30 years”
«To achieve our 2030 goals“55% reduction in emissions compared to 1990”and thus aim for neutrality in 2050, we will have to do in ten years what we have struggled to do in 30 years“, underlines the report, according to which”despite recent progress, we are not yet on the path to climate neutrality“. So “decarbonization will call for additional investmentof 66 billion euros per year, reports the general inspector of finances Selma Mahfouz in the document. The coming years are described as “decade of all difficulties“, with massive needs to finance new mobility, green industry or building insulation, or to compensate for the collapse of the French forest carbon sink. However, the investments needed to limit global warming will not make it possible to produce more or more efficiently. On the contrary, they will initially lead to a slowdown in growth.
Read alsoHeating, cars: carbon emissions billed to European households in 2027
Sharing of sacrifices
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While “the transition is spontaneously unequal“, its economic cost “will only be politically and socially accepted if it is fairly distributed“. In effect, “even for the middle classes, renovation of housing and change of heating vector on the one hand, acquisition of an electric vehicle instead of a thermal vehicle on the other hand call for an investment of around one year income“, calculated the authors. Today, the additional cost of buying an electric car is not taken into account in national accounts, because it is classified as a new product and different from the car with a thermal engine, they note in passing. To support households and businesses in the face of investment needs and the inflationary effects of the transition, “public finances will be called upon to contribute substantially to the effort“, and therefore to increase the indebtedness of the State. The risk that the energy transition poses to public debtis around 10 points of GDP in 2030 (i.e. at least 280 billion euros), 15 points in 2035, 25 points in 2040“, according to the report which judges however that it “there is no point in delaying efforts in the name of controlling the public debt». «This debt is legitimate“, declared Jean Pisani-Ferry during a presentation to the press.
Delaying investments would only increase the effort that France will have to provide thereafter, to achieve the climate objectives. “An increase in compulsory levies will probably be necessary“, according to the authors who believe that this increase “could be based on the financial wealth of the wealthiest households“. If the report believes that the ideas of individual air travel quotas, popularized by Jean-Marc Jancovici, or individual carbon accounts “are far from being directly applicable“, he estimates that “the question of the fair sharing of sacrifices is as essential as that posed, in its time, by the participation of each in the defense of the national territory“. Finally, faced with China and the United States, the European Union suffers from a “serious competitiveness problem“because of the high price of its energy and which will not be solved by the carbon tax at the borders, which remains”an imperfect device».
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