On the left, differences on the means to achieve a “zero carbon France”

2023-11-21 15:30:10
Aurelia

A “zero carbon France”? A few days before the opening of the 28th Conference of the Parties (COP) on the United Nations climate, which will be held in Dubai, in the United Arab Emirates, from November 30 to December 12, the idea has become consensual on the left, where even the most productive people come. After having long castigated the ecologists, whom he criticized for following a line that was too punitive and not attentive enough to the social question, the leader of the French Communist Party (PCF), Fabien Roussel, finally converted to this objective. . On November 6, his party adopted a plan aimed at achieving carbon neutrality by 2050.

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That evening, under the modernist dome of the PCF national council room, Fabien Roussel recognized that he had to “review the program” which he had defended during the 2022 presidential election. At the time, the deputy from the North stood out from other left-wing parties, by defending the right to “good meat” and clean cars for all. Léon Deffontaines, leader of the PCF in the European elections, who boasted, in an interview with Release, on July 1, to take the plane to go to Perpignan, was in the front row. On the screen, the Shift Project data by Jean-Marc Jancovici analyzing the carbon footprint of air travel, and a stated ambition: to reduce air traffic by half.

Although it uses this data, the PCF nevertheless refrains from sharing Mr. Jancovici’s most divisive idea, that of a quota of four plane trips per life. There is no question of deviating too much from his line, aiming not to embody a “punitive ecology”. The logic being to dialogue, not to frighten and to decarbonize “without penalizing the world of work, the most modest, without creating unemployment or fueling despair”as Fabien Roussel says, who promises “happy days on a viable planet”.

Through this zero carbon plan, the PCF distinguishes itself from its left-wing colleagues by developing an “in-house” scenario, informed by several sources including data from the nuclear industry. Both supporters of a 100% renewable horizon, La France insoumise (LFI) and Europe Ecologie-Les Verts (EELV) prefer to refer to already established scenarios, those of the négaWatt association or the Agence de the environment and energy management, through the use of wind and solar power.

Twenty new EPRs

The communists took advantage of this to mark their pro-nuclear difference. In atomic matters, in fact, the party chooses the maximalist option. When Emmanuel Macron aims to build six to fourteen EPRs (third generation reactors) in the years to come, the PCF plans twenty new ones, accompanied by a dozen small modular reactors, called “SMRs”. The idea being to electrify or almost everything, which leads to a doubling of electricity consumption. That is, beyond the most energy-intensive scenario proposed by the Electricity Transmission Network, a way for the party not to disrupt lifestyles too much.

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