Emmanuel Macron presented on Monday the main axes of his “planning” for a “sovereign”, “competitive” and “fair” ecology, promising to announce in October a resumption of “control over our price of electricity” in the face of opposition who accuse him of letting the bill explode. After having praised on television on Sunday evening a “French-style ecology”, “an ecology of progress”, “which is neither denial […] nor the cure which consists of saying it’s going to be a massacre”, the head of state further refined his vision at the end of a ministerial meeting at the Élysée to adopt his plan to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

To meet France’s objectives, that is to say a reduction of 55% by 2030 compared to 1990, we must “go twice as fast”, he reaffirmed, while the decline in emissions in its first five-year term was helped by the economic slowdown caused by Covid.

The President of the Republic made some new announcements, such as an immediate envelope of 700 million euros from the State to build 13 metropolitan RERs, i.e. more than the ten projects initially envisaged. But he said the projects would cost a total of €10 billion.

Above all, he addressed a very politically sensitive point in this new school year dominated by inflation and the decline in purchasing power: 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, he said without detailing how .

And in November the system for leasing electric cars at 100 euros per month will be presented, which will start with only a few tens of thousands of vehicles in 2024 to give the French and European sector time to gain momentum in the face of Chinese models. These announcements are part of a strategy that Emmanuel Macron tried to make understandable.

According to him, ecological planning must be part of France’s reindustrialization policy, through greening and in particular the electrification of transport and industry, and serve the objective of sovereignty to reduce dependence on imports.

At the European level, he suggested that he wanted expenditure for the ecological transition not to be taken into account in the accounting of the deficit and the debt. “France will fight to have a massive investment strategy,” he insisted.

According to his entourage, this presentation was the high point of the sequence launched by Emmanuel Macron between the two rounds of the presidential election. At a meeting in Marseille, he promised that his future Prime Minister would be “directly responsible for ecological planning” in order to go “twice as fast” to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 55% by 2030. .

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 try to rally left-wing voters against Marine Le Pen.

Élisabeth Borne then cleared the ground by presenting the outlines of this plan to party leaders and civil society last week. If the observation was deemed “lucid” by environmentalists, the latter are demanding to move from words to action, and to finance this titanic project beyond 2024.

Emmanuel Macron did mention a multi-year program, but without providing figures. And if he confirmed the exit from coal in 2027, he did not give a date for the exit of other fossil fuels such as oil and gas, as demanded by an organization like Greenpeace.