Emmanuel Macron presented on Monday the main axes of his “planning” for a “sovereign”, “competitive” and “fair” ecology, promising to “regain control” over the price of electricity in the face of opposition which accuses him of let the bill explode.
After having praised on television on Sunday a “French-style ecology”, “which is neither denial”, “nor the cure which consists of saying it is going to be a massacre”, the head of state refined his vision at the end of a ministerial meeting at the Elysée to adopt its plan to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
To meet the objectives, a reduction of 55% by 2030 compared to 1990, we must “go twice as fast”, he reaffirmed, while the decline in emissions during his first five-year term was helped by the economic slowdown caused by Covid.
He notably mentioned an immediate envelope of 700 million euros to build 13 metropolitan RERs. These projects will cost 10 billion, he said.
While he had confirmed the day before that he would give up banning gas boilers so as not to leave rural areas “without solutions”, he also set the objective of producing “one million heat pumps” per year in the country. by 2027, three times the current level.
Above all, he addressed a very politically sensitive point in this new school year dominated by inflation: the price of electricity.
In October, he will announce a resumption of “control”, to have prices “which will give visibility to both households and our manufacturers” while being competitive at European level. The method will be “rapidly implemented in an energy law”, specified the Elysée.
And in November pre-reservations will be opened for the leasing of electric cars at 100 euros per month, which will start with only a few tens of thousands of vehicles in 2024 to give the European sector time to gain momentum in the face of Chinese models.
The boss of the socialists Olivier Faure denounced X as a plan “put together in a hurry”, deploring the absence of “sustainable and socially just financing solutions”.
“We are generally disappointed,” green MP Eva Sas told AFP, criticizing a “president who continues to say I like cars” instead of ordering a “moratorium on road projects”.
“There are not really any new announcements and even sometimes misleading announcements, such as the exit from coal” in 2027, “initially planned for 2022”, regretted Andreas Rüdinger, energy specialist at the IDDRI. He deplores a “productivist vision of ecology”, with no deadline for the necessary “exit from fossil fuels in heating and transport”.
In his speech, Emmanuel Macron tried to make his strategy understandable: according to him, ecological planning must be part of the reindustrialization of France, through greening and in particular the electrification of transport and industry, and serve the the objective of sovereignty to reduce dependence on imports.
At the same time, this ecology must be “accessible and fair”, pleaded the president, ensuring that he wanted to “support both the territories and the people who are the most fragile”. In housing, beyond “Ma Prime Renov”, he assured that “the most modest households, but also average families” would be “better supported”.
“It’s a good signal that Emmanuel Macron is finally talking about fair ecology,” reacted Anne Bringault, from the Climate Action Network (RAC). “But it will be necessary to have something concrete, like a balance of 0?” on renovation for low-income households and the application of the “polluter pays principle with taxation on air transport (…) to finance the train”.
At the European level, the president suggested that he wanted expenditure for the ecological transition not to be taken into account in the deficit and the debt.
According to his entourage, this presentation was the high point of the sequence launched between the two rounds of the presidential election, when he had promised that his future Prime Minister would be “directly responsible for ecological planning” in order to go “twice as quickly” to meet climate objectives.
The second five-year term “will be ecological or it will not be”, launched the man whose first term had disappointed environmental defenders and who was to rally left-wing voters against Marine Le Pen.
Elisabeth Borne then orchestrated the work which made it possible to identify the necessary efforts, sector by sector. An additional seven billion euros will be allocated to the ecological transition for 2024, bringing state spending on the climate and environment to 40 billion.
Emmanuel Macron did mention a multi-year program, but without providing figures.
“We were waiting for a moment of truth, the president was content to give a timetable,” lamented Jean Burkard, from WWF France, calling for “discouraging SUVs”, “putting the protection of biodiversity back at the heart” of our choices agriculture and restore carbon sinks.
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09/25/2023 22:26:36 – Paris (AFP) – © 2023 AFP
