2023-04-17 19:25:45
Posted Apr 17, 2023, 7:01 PMUpdated on Apr 17, 2023 at 7:25 PM
Time is counted. Less than two weeks after Bercy unveiled the main lines of its future green industry bill, a draft was sent to the National Council for Ecological Transition (CNTE) on Sunday evening. The dialogue body that was seized by the government should deliver its opinion on May 4, even if the NGOs have asked for additional time, judging the deadline too short.
The Minister of the Economy, Bruno Le Maire, had promised that it would not contain more than fifteen articles. As it stands, the text that “Les Echos” was able to consult into thirteen, divided into three key titles. A text that can be further revised or modified in the coming weeks.
Simplification by small touches
By far the most extensive, the first title contains a series of measures intended to accelerate industrial establishments and rehabilitate wastelands. With the declared desire to reduce the delays in the procedures for issuing permits, in particular for authorizations to open sites. The idea is also to facilitate “the release of industrial land”, and to prepare the land before it accommodates new establishments.
There is “no revolution”, in the eyes of the lawyer specializing in environmental law Arnaud Gossement, who sees in it above all “a simplification by small touches, with measures to adapt existing rules within of the environmental code.
Subsidy War
The text must also make it possible to accelerate projects of national interest. It targets in particular the solar, wind turbine, battery and energy storage sectors, heat pumps, fuel cells or even biogas, CO storage2 or power grid technologies, nuclear. “The industries listed are essentially energy production industries, regrets Anne Bringault, program coordinator at the Climate Action Network (RAC). We could also talk about insulation materials, train construction, etc. »
In order to promote green made in France, the draft bill also includes measures on the “environmental issues of public procurement” as well as a section on the financing of green industry, with the creation of a climate savings plan reserved for under 18s.
This first text satisfies for the moment the representatives of the industrialists. “It is going in the right direction, taking up fairly faithfully the legislative measures recommended by the Guillot report [sur la simplification des implantations en France, NDLR] on industrial land”, judge Vincent Moulin Wright, managing director of France industrie.
The leader also welcomes the circular economy component, which plans to remove the status of “waste” from recycled materials. An integration of circular economy issues which is also welcomed by NGOs. “We are now awaiting regulatory measures as well as employment aspects, and especially taxation, on which we will be very vigilant,” he warns.
An astonishing, but assumed timing
Because this first version of the bill leaves out one of the most awaited aspects of industrialists, that grouping together all the tax and aid measures to promote green industry. Not that the government is giving up on it, but it prefers to proceed in two stages: if the main announcements should be made in mid-May, when the text is presented to the Council of Ministers, the examination of the proposals themselves should be referred to the finance bill for 2024, expected in the fall, according to several sources. An astonishing timing, but assumed by the executive, even if it means feeding a little more the impatience of the industrialists.
“Since the Inflation Reduction Act in the United States, the major economic zones of the world have been competing for subsidies to accelerate the necessary decarbonization of industry. France and Europe must come up with a clear response to this challenge,” defends Alexandre Saubot, president of France Industrie.
The presidential majority has already put forward several avenues that should feed the government project. With however the obligation to finance these measures by cuts in certain tax aids, in particular those known as “brown” because supporting the polluting activities. “If it’s a way of taking back from us in the left pocket what we’re going to be given in the right pocket, that’s not going to work,” worries an investor.
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