There is better but the account is still not there. In its fourth annual report, published on Wednesday June 29, the High Council for Climate (HCC) considers that France’s response to climate change “is progressing but remains insufficient”, so that “Major risks persist of not achieving the targets for reducing greenhouse gas emissions”. Given this threat and the strengthening of European targets, the independent body, set up by Emmanuel Macron in 2018, calls for a ” startle “ climate action in the country.
In the context of the war in Ukraine and soaring energy prices, such an acceleration would make it possible to “reduce France’s heavy dependence on imports of fossil fuels and mineral fertilizers” which make it vulnerable, add the thirteen members of the HCC. These climatologists, agronomists, economists or geographers advise the government to give priority to sobriety, the deployment of renewable energies and the development of agricultural and food practices (reduction of meat consumption, waste, etc.).
Insufficient decline in emissions
As every year, this report, which has become a benchmark for analyzing government climate policy, is eagerly awaited. Published in a context of tensions within the structure, it contains around fifty recommendations to guide a new government that has promised to make ecology one of its priorities. Proof of Matignon’s voluntarism, the advisers of the Prime Minister’s Office, responsible for ecological and energy planning, organized a press briefing before the report was submitted to Elisabeth Borne, as well as to the Ministers for Ecological Transition and the energy transition.
First conclusion of the thick document (180 pages), entitled “Going beyond the findings, implementing the solutions”: greenhouse gas emissions increased by 6.4% in 2021, compared to 2020, due to the partial recovery of economic activity post-Covid-19, but they remain 3.8% below the level of 2019. “They are part of a downward trend, with a reduction of 23% since 1990”notes Corinne Le Quéré, climatologist at the British University of East Anglia, who chairs the HCC.
However, this decrease is far from sufficient. First, because the rate of reduction over the 2019-2021 period (–1.9% per year), described as ” modest ” by the HCC, is close to that observed over the decade 2010-2019 (–1.7% per year). Then, because if the shows for 2019-2021 are in the nails, it is mainly due to the effects of the pandemic and the postponement of part of the action until later. The government, failing to meet its objectives for the 2015-2018 period, has in fact raised the carbon budgets, that is to say the emission ceilings, for the 2019-2023 period. “The still partial resumption of activities in 2021, with the maintenance of restrictions and teleworking, in particular, complicates the identification of the effects of structural measures”says Corinne Le Quéré.
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