France will invest an additional €7 billion in the energy and climate transition next year compared to 2023, French Prime Minister Elisabeth Borne said on Tuesday.
In total, France will have an additional €10 billion go towards climate action in 2024 compared to 2023, as €3 billion have been earmarked for multi-year climate projects, according to Tuesday’s post-meeting press release.
“Doing more in seven years than we have done in 33”, Borne said before a group of f political, economic, voluntary and civil society players in Paris on Tuesday.
Of the additional funding, €2.3 billion will be earmarked for natural resources and agriculture, including €500 million for forestry initiatives, while €2.6 billion will go to renovating buildings, including an additional €1.6 billion to support residential construction. In the end, €5 billion will be committed in this area by 2024.
On top of that, an additional €1.8 billion will help develop low-carbon energies and €1.6 billion for mobility (including €1.4 billion for infrastructure), while €1.8 billion have been earmarked for industry and €0.8 billion for the support of local authorities.
This future funding is “very consistent with the Pisani-Ferry – Mahfouz report” unveiled in mid-May, Antoine Peillon, the advisor in charge of ecological planning in the Prime Minister’s office, added. The Pisani-Ferry – Mahfouz report suggests that climate action should mobilise around €33 billion of public money annually by 2030.
Future planning
These amounts are part of the French ecological planning process, which has been under way for several months.
This plan identifies the objectives and resources needed to achieve the EU’s Fit for 55 objectives of reducing bloc greenhouse gas emissions by 55% by 2030 compared to 1990 levels.
According to French Prime Minister Elisabeth Borne, the plan will be a “balanced”, “comprehensive”, and “collective” plan which favours “economic development and sovereignty” and “sustainable for everyone”.
On Monday, Borne met the leaders of the political parties to explain her government’s environmental strategy. The aim is to win over the opposition because France’s “ecological planning objectives” will be included in the energy and climate programme law to be debated in parliament in the coming months. As the government only has a relative majority, it needs the support or abstention of some opposition members in the National Assembly.
Green leader Marine Tondelier welcomed “the work of the government’s teams because it is a very comprehensive, very lucid and quite unprecedented report”.
“But planning and meetings are useless if there is no action”, she added. The radical left party La France insoumise (The Left/GUE) did not take part in the meeting.
New measures are expected to be announced in a speech by President Emmanuel Macron in the next few days.
(Paul Messad | Euractiv.fr)
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