Veteran climate diplomat Laurence Tubiana is in contention to be France’s new prime minister, with three left-wing parties backing her as a compromise candidate following inconclusive legislative elections. But infighting among the leftist political coalition that won the most seats means she has yet to be confirmed as its official choice.

France’s Green Party (EELV), Socialist Party (PS) and Communist Party (PCF) have proposed Tubiana – a key figure in securing the Paris Agreement on climate change – for the leadership role, representing the New Popular Front (NFP) coalition of left-wing parties. She has no formal political affiliation.

The head of the PS, Olivier Faure, said Tubiana “completely corresponds to what we are promoting”, praising her as the “architect of COP21 [where the Paris Agreement was adopted in 2015], commissioner for the climate convention, economist and diplomat engaged in both the environmental and social fields”.

But the biggest member of the NFP alliance, hard-left party France Unbowed (La France insoumise, LFI), is opposed to Tubiana getting the job, as they fear she is too close to the current President Emmanuel Macron and his centrist Renaissance party. “If this is the profile our partners are working on, I’ll fall off my chair,” said LFI coordinator Manuel Bompard on Tuesday, adding the suggestion was “not serious”.

In the July 7 elections, which resulted in a surprise defeat for the far right, no block won a majority of seats in the French legislature, known as the National Assembly. Of the 577 seats, the NFP left-wing alliance won 182, President Macron’s centrist party 168 and Marine Le Pen’s far-right National Rally (RN) 143.

On Tuesday, French President Emmanuel Macron accepted the resignation of current Prime Minister Gabriel Attal, although he will lead a caretaker government with a limited mandate until a new government is named.

The choice of the new prime minister is ultimately up to President Macron, but in order to govern, the PM must have the support of a majority of National Assembly deputies.

The left-wing parties have been searching for a joint candidate and, after the LFI’s suggestion of Huguette Bello was rejected by the Socialists, Tubiana’s name was put forward. Faure said Tubiana had been consulted before the suggestion was made.

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Tubiana, he said, is “someone who has strong convictions, who has never compromised. She has always been on that side [the left], she has never deviated. This is a demonstration of her ability to stand her ground.”

But according to French newspaper Le Monde, the LFI suspects she is too close to Macron. He twice offered her the job of ecological transition minister, which she declined, and she recently co-signed an editorial calling for the the left-wing block to reach out to Macron’s centrist party in order to govern.

Climate pedigree

Tubiana started out at the French National Institute for Agricultural Research before setting up and leading an NGO working on food security and the global environment called Solagral through the 1980s and 1990s.

In 1997, then French President Lionel Jospin of the Socialist Party appointed her as his environmental advisor until he stepped down in 2022.

Tubiana next founded an influential French think-tank called the Institute for Sustainable Development and International Relations (IDDRI) before re-entering government as France’s lead negotiator in the run up to COP21, at which the landmark Paris Agreement was signed.

Since then, she has been an official United Nations champion on climate action, as well as president and CEO of the European Climate Foundation (ECF), which funds green think-tanks and media outlets including Climate Home News.

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In these roles, she has pushed for governments at UN climate summits to agree to phase out fossil fuels, and called carbon capture and storage a false solution to the fossil fuel industries’ emissions.

In 2018, Macron appointed her as a member of France’s official climate advisory body, the High Council on Climate Change.

The ECF has recently worked alongside the French and Kenyan governments looking into global green taxes that could fund climate action.

Laurence Tubiana (left) celebrates the signing of the Paris Agreement in 2015 (credit: IISD.ca/Kiara Worth)

Environmental lawyer Arnaud Gossement said Tubiana’s appointment as France’s prime minister would be “a really good idea” as she is “a recognised climate specialist”.

Florence Faucher, professor of political science at French university Sciences Po, told Climate Home that Tubiana’s appointment “would certainly be interesting” but “I really doubt it [will happen]”.

The leftist coalition has said it hopes to find agreement on a candidate soon, with the new National Assembly set to meet for the first time on Thursday. One way the matter could be settled is by holding a vote among the new left-wing deputies.

On Wednesday morning, EELV deputy Sandrine Rousseau told French TV: “The discussions are not over – we will find a solution.”

(Reporting by Joe Lo; editing by Megan Rowling)

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“Leading by example is obviously a key way to move forward and to show that the solutions are under our eyes,” she told a press conference, alongside ministers from Canada, Spain and other – mainly European – governments.

But, just two months later, in efforts to placate protesting farmers, her government U-turned on plans to remove subsidies for the fossil fuels that power agricultural machinery like tractors.

And the political fallout of the decision could reverberate beyond France’s borders, Sussex University international relations professor Peter Newell told Climate Home.

“It doesn’t send a good signal about these commitments if, at the first sign of trouble, richer countries relent for short-term, narrow electoral reasons,” he said.

The then French environment minister (second from left) posing for pictures after joining an initiative to end fossil fuel subsidies

The G20 group of big economies has been promising to phase out “inefficient” fossil fuel subsidies since 2009, but to little effect. Globally, explicit subsidies – undercharging for the supply costs of fossil fuels – more than doubled to $1.3 trillion in 2022, according to International Monetary Fund figures.

Bad example

Newell warned that France’s move “sends a signal that it’s okay to capitulate in the face of social pressure when it comes to difficult choices around fossil fuel subsidy reform”. 

It could spur on other groups to push back against similar reforms, he said. Farmers in Germany and Lithuania are also currently fighting plans to remove their fuel subsidies.

A team of researchers found that between 2005 and 2018, 41 countries had at least one riot associated with popular demand for fuel. Their study concluded that the removal of subsidies had often led to social unrest. In France in 2018, for example, the rising cost of driving sparked a wave of protests by the gilets jaunes (yellow vest) movement, leading to a rollback of fuel tax hikes.

French farm machinery produces about ten million tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent a year, which is just over a tenth of France’s farming’s emissions, according to a recent analysis by the French government’s official climate advisers (HCC). 

About half of French agricultural emissions come from cows releasing methane through burps. Just over a tenth is from fossil fuel-based fertilisers, with smaller amounts from pigs, sheep and other sources.

French farmers currently receive an annual €1.7-billion ($1.8-bn) taxpayer subsidy to make the diesel that runs their machinery cheaper.

The HCC analysis says that about a tenth of farm machinery’s carbon pollution can be stopped through driving in a way that uses less fuel and engine maintenance.

To reduce emissions further, it recommends tractors should be converted to biodiesel or electric engines “as soon as possible to avoid the risks of lock-in” given that many tractors bought today will still be in use as France gets close to its deadline of reaching net-zero emissions in 2050.

Just transition

Stéphane De Cara, director of research at the French agricultural research institute INRAE, sees the failure to address this “low-hanging fruit” as a clear signal that France is “not moving in the right direction” when it comes to emissions targets.

But, he said, if the fuel subsidy were to be scrapped, then the money saved should be channeled back to poorer farmers so that they can invest in greener technology.

Since Cop28, Pannier-Runacher has been appointed to France’s agriculture ministry and put in charge of ecological planning, energy issues and the production of biomass. She has vowed to devote all her energy to “farmers and food sovereignty”.

Ahead of European elections in May, farmers’ protests have been dominating headlines across Europe, pushing their grievances over foreign competition and falling incomes, coupled with rising costs, up the political agenda. Some farmers have targeted climate and nature policies at the national and European Union levels.

According to Newell, right-wing political parties are using the issue as a “lightning rod for broader social discontent” as part of a “weaponisation” of climate policy across Europe ahead of June’s EU elections. 

Farming is the “new battle line in discussions around just transitions”, the researcher added. 

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The governments are in advanced discussions with a handful of European and Global South countries that could join the coalition in Dubai, according to a source with knowledge of the talks.

The taskforce is planning to consider a broad range of options, including levies on international shipping, aviation, financial transactions and fossil fuels, Climate Home understands.

Chrysoula Zacharopoulou, France’s development minister, said the goal is to agree on specific proposals by Cop30, in two years’ time. Those could then be negotiated in relevant international institutions, like the OECD, the UN or the G20, she added.

Barbados’s climate envoy Avinash Persaud told Climate Home the country is “happy to participate” in the initiative.

What can be taxed

Many country leaders and climate experts see taxes as among the most promising so-called innovative sources of finance that could help plug the large gap in the provision of climate funding to vulnerable countries.

“The need for additional resources internationally is paramount”, said Persaud. “The Green Climate Fund, the new loss and damage fund, these all need real resources in the billions of dollars and they can’t come from existing tax-revenues so easily, so we need additional revenues.”

Taxes on fossil fuel extraction and the emissions of the shipping industry could raise up to $210 billion and $60 billion a year respectively, according to a recent study by Climate Action Network and the European Commission.

Sources of taxation and potential revenues, according to the CAN study.

However, reaching an agreement over those measures is politically challenging and would require several years.

French-Kenyan alliance

Political momentum has gathered pace since the global financial summit in Paris last June, when 40 countries agreed to look into new avenues for international taxation, focussing initially on large greenhouse gas-emitting sectors.

Speaking at the end of the event, France President Emmanuel Macron stressed the importance of global coordination. “It doesn’t work when you do it alone, the financial flows go elsewhere”, he said.

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Macron found a crucial ally in Kenya’s President William Ruto, who put the issue on the agenda at the African climate summit in Nairobi in September.

That summit’s final statement floated the idea of a global carbon taxation regime, formed by levies on fossil fuel trade, maritime transport and aviation, and potentially “augmented” by a global financial transaction tax (FTT).

Broad framework

The French and Kenyan governments have accelerated efforts over the last couple of months to form a broad coalition, receiving interest from countries, a source with knowledge of the matter told Climate Home.

Those pushing the plan have not yet finalised a detailed framework or specific targets because they don’t want to put any country off at this early stage, they added.

Farmers’ Protest in Gerona, Philippines. Basilio Sepe / Greenpeace

France’s Zacharopoulou said during last week’s Paris Peace Forum that the coalition will both provide a detailed analysis of each taxation option and gauge how acceptable they are to  different governments.

“It is a sensitive conversation that needs to be led with a cool head”, she added.

Developing countries sensitivity

Many large developing countries have opposed climate-related international taxation. They claim they would distort markets, hamper development and shift responsibility for reducing emissions.

Brazil led resistance from a group of governments to a tax on the global emissions of the shipping sector at the International Maritime Organization (IMO) earlier this year.

They argued that such a tax would disproportionately hit developing countries and particularly Brazil, whose economy relies on shipping heavy low-value things long distances.

Countries eventually decided to study new ‘technical’ and ‘economic’ measures to tackle the climate impacts of shipping, pushing a decision into the future.

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Persaud said the taskforce will need to pay close attention to these considerations. “We need to rethink shipping and aviation emissions levies so they’re not a tax on remoteness which is a concern today,” he added.

Rachel Owens from the European Climate Foundation, which is involved in setting up the taskforce, said countries will drive forward discussions “in an equitable way”.

“This means not putting the burden on developing countries and ensuring that any adverse impacts are mitigated”, she added.

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The tax credit makes France the first EU country to take advantage of a loosening of European state aid rules in recent months in response to new tax subsidies in the United States made available by the Biden administration’s $430 billion Inflation Reduction Act (IRA).

Le Maire’s ministry said the tax credit, which will be available on a temporary basis in line with the new EU rules until 2025, with the possibility of an extension to 2029, was expected to generate private investments totalling 23 billion euros by 2030 and directly create 40,000 jobs.

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The tax credit aims to spur investment in environmentally friendly projects and revive France’s industrial sector as European companies come increasingly under pressure from U.S. companies, major tax subsidies in the IRA to cut carbon emission, boost domestic production and manufacturing.

“We have no reason to be embarrassed by comparisons with the United States,” Le Maire said on Tuesday, adding that various European and existing French aid available was of a similar scale.

The tax credit will cover companies’ capital expenditures on 25-40% of their investments in wind and solar power facilities, heat pumps and batteries.

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It will be included in the 2024 budget law and its cost will be offset by reducing tax breaks available for certain types of carbon-intensive fuels which remain to be determined.

The bill also aims to make 2,000 hecatres (4,900 acres) available for new industrial sites and cut in half how long it takes to approve a new industrial project from 17 months to nine months.

It also will create a new class of tax-free savings accounts available to people under the age of 18 through their banks, which the finance ministry expects to generate 5 billion euros that can be used to finance green industrial projects.

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The two lawsuits, heard today in Strasbourg, accuse the governments of France and Switzerland of breaching the human rights of their citizens by not doing enough to cut national emissions.

It is the first time climate change has come before the European Court of Human Rights, but is unlikely to be the last.

The lawsuits were filed by a former French mayor and a group of Swiss seniors, all of whom argue that their governments have breached their rights to life and to respect for private and family life under the European Convention on Human Rights.

The judgements could set a “pivotal” precedent for climate action, campaigners told Climate Home News, as they could make states take more ambitious climate action as part of their human rights obligations.

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Elders facing extreme heat

In the first case, an association of 2,038 older women called the KlimaSeniorinnen, as well as four individual applicants, argue that they are particularly vulnerable to climate change.

They presented evidence to the court that older people – particularly women – are more likely to die during heatwaves.

The group, which has an average age of 73, first petitioned the domestic courts for action but its case was dismissed.

Switzerland does not dispute that climate change is real and could affect human health. But the government’s legal team told the court its carbon emissions could not be directly linked to the health of older women and said they were not the only ones affected.

Furthermore, it maintained that its existing climate targets and policies are sufficient and said it should not be asked to do more if it was not technically and economically feasible.

Jessica Simor, a lawyer representing the KlimaSeniorinnen, said Switzerland itself had never assessed the fairness of its climate targets and policies, pointing to independent research by Climate Action Tracker that deems the country’s current efforts ‘insufficient’.

Vidéo : Audience Verein KlimaSeniorinnen Schweiz et autres c. Suisse https://t.co/fFghE94vTl | Video: Hearing Verein KlimaSeniorinnen Schweiz and others v. Switzerland https://t.co/LQsm3aMC56#ECHR #CEDH #ECHRhearing pic.twitter.com/JSJASyX5em

— ECHR CEDH (@ECHR_CEDH) March 29, 2023

Switzerland currently aims to reduce domestic greenhouse gas emissions by 34% by 2030, which is lower than its formal international commitment of cutting “at least 50%” of all greenhouse gas emissions by the same date.

In 2021, the Swiss government held a referendum to align its domestic target with the more ambitious 50% cut, but voters rejected it.

Marc Willers, a barrister representing the KlimaSeniorinnen, told the court that blaming the referendum was “plainly a bad argument” and claimed Switzerland was responsible for its violations “irrespective of how they came about”.

The KlimaSeniorinnen want Switzerland to cut its domestic emissions by above 60% below 1990 levels by 2030, which they say is more in line with similar nations and the EU itself.

Willers said Switzerland’s approach undermined global trust and efforts to combat climate change. If a nation as rich and technologically advanced as Switzerland does not do its fair share, he argued, “what hope is there that other countries will step up?”

Climate victim?

In the second lawsuit, against the government of France, the former mayor of the commune of Grande-Synthe argues that he is personally vulnerable because his home is at risk from flooding.

Damien Carême, now a green MEP for France, had also brought a domestic case against France to the country’s top administrative court. In 2021, the court ordered the government to act immediately to meet its climate commitments, or risk potential fines.

But Carême is challenging the French court’s assertion that he is not directly affected by the country’s failure to take sufficient action on climate change.

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The French government contends that Carême should not be considered a victim under the law and asked for the case to be struck out.

Diégo Colas, director of legal affairs at the French foreign ministry, told the court that France had recently enhanced its emission reduction measures and compliance with its objectives was already being scrutinised by the domestic courts.

New cases coming

The 17-judge panel will now consider its ruling, which is not expected until next year.

In the meantime, the court will hear a third climate case, filed by six Portuguese young people against 32 countries, including all EU member states, Norway, Switzerland, the UK, Ukraine and Turkey, which has been scheduled for the autumn.

The group, now aged between 11 and 23, claims that government inaction on climate change discriminates against young people and poses a tangible risk to life. It refers in particular to forest fires that killed more than one hundred people in Portugal in 2017 and which were worsened by climate change.

Gerry Liston, senior lawyer at Global Action Legal Network, which is supporting the Portuguese case, said the lawsuits gave the court “power to direct a major acceleration in European action on the climate crisis”.

Sébastien Duyck, human rights and climate campaign manager for the Center for International Environmental Law, described the hearings as a “pivotal moment” in the fight against climate change and said the resulting judgments would be carefully monitored by governments and civil society organisations around the world.

“They have the potential to set an influential legal precedent that would further confirm that states must take more adequate action against climate change as a matter of their human rights obligations,” said Duyck.

If the court finds human rights have been breached, it could open the floodgates to similar litigation before the European Court of Human Rights and national courts in all member states of the Council of Europe, said Annalisa Savaresi, associate professor in international environmental law at the University of Eastern Finland.

NOTE: Expenses for attending the court hearing were supported by a grant from the Foundation for International Law for the Environment

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A group of French and Ugandan campaigners argued in court that Total did not do enough to stop environmental and human rights problems in its East Africa Crude Oil Pipeline (Eacop) and the associated Tilenga oilfield.

They asked the court to order the company’s vigilance plan, meant to address issues like environmental risks and community displacement, to be rewritten.

But judges decided they did not have the power to conduct the in-depth examination neccessary and said the campaigners’ legal case had changed too much since they first filed.

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A Total spokesperson defended its plan and highlighted the judgment’s ruling that it was “sufficiently detailed to not be considered as summary”.

But campaigners pointed out that judges did not rule on the details at the heart of the case. They denied their case had significantly changed and said they were considering an appeal.

Dickens Kamugisha, director of the Africa Institute for Energy Governance (Afiego), described the decision as a “huge disappointment for the associations and communities affected in Uganda and Tanzania who had placed their hopes in French justice”. 

The judgment, published earlier today, was the first test of France’s novel corporate duty of vigilance law.

This requires all large businesses headquartered in France and international corporations with a significant presence there to set out clear measures to prevent human rights violations and environmental damage – even among their subsidiaries. 

Huge pipeline

In 2021, Total signed an agreement with Uganda and Tanzania to start building the $3.5 billion, 1,443-kilometre pipeline alongside the state-owned China National Offshore Oil Corporation and Uganda National Oil Company. It will transport crude oil from the Tilenga oilfields being developed in north-western Uganda to a Tanzanian port on the Indian Ocean. 

The project has proved hugely controversial for its contribution to climate change and the impacts on people living along its path.  

Research by the US-based Climate Accountability Institute concluded it would emit 379 million tonnes of carbon over its 25-year lifespan – much more than laid out in the project’s environmental impact statements, which only account for the pipeline’s direct construction and operation. 

In a resolution last year, the European Parliament expressed “grave concern” about alleged human rights violations in Uganda and Tanzania, linked to the project. And Ugandan protestors concerned about its impact on the local environment, displacement of communities and the lack of benefits accruing to Uganda have accused police of brutality towards them. 

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Campaigners have put huge pressure on financial institutions and insurers not to support Eacop for environmental and human rights reasons, and many have publicly distanced themselves from the project.  

But with both the Ugandan and Tanzanian governments have given formal construction approval in the last few months, work on the pipeline is now expected to progress. 

Uganda’s president Yoweri Museveni has accused Western critics of the project of hypocrisy because only a handful of nations have committed to ending their own fossil fuel production.

Other Eacop lawsuits are still pending. One was filed by Afiego in Uganda against the country’s environmental and petroleum authorities for approving Tilenga’s environmental and social impact assessment. And another brought by civil society organisations from Uganda and Tanzania is at the East African Court of Justice, although this has been bogged down by jurisdictional arguments.   

Duty of vigilance? 

Although the lawsuit against Eacop was unsuccessful, several other environmental lawsuits have been filed under the same French law. 

In 2020, a coalition of NGOs and local authorities filed a separate case against Total, claiming it is legally required to identify the risks resulting from its contribution to global warming and to take the necessary measures to reduce its emissions. The case was joined two years later by Paris, New York, the city of Poitiers and Amnesty International France. They recently asked the courts to order the multinational to take provisional measures such as the suspension of new oil and gas projects pending the court’s ruling. 

A coalition of Brazilian and Colombian indigenous peoples’ organisations and international NGOs have also sued supermarket chain Casino under the duty of vigilance law, accusing it not having taken the necessary measures to exclude beef linked to illegal deforestation, land grabbing and violations of indigenous peoples’ rights from its supply chain in Brazil and Colombia. 

Two months ago, food corporation Danone was sued by ClientEarth, Surfrider Foundation Europe and Zero Waste France, who accused it of not doing enough to reduce its plastic footprint and so failing to live up to its duties under the law. 

And in the last week alone, two duty of vigilance claims were filed against French bank BNP Paribas. Oxfam France, Friends of the Earth France and Notre Affaire à Tous are suing it for supporting companies that aggressively develop new oil and gas fields and infrastructure, while Notre Affaire à Tous and Brazilian NGO Comissão Pastoral da Terra have taken aim at its provision of financial services to companies they allege contribute to deforestation of the Amazon rainforest.  

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Wedged between Brazil and Suriname, the overseas department has little in common with mainland France bar the name. The Amazon rainforest covers more than 90% of the territory.

However, French Guiana is critical to Europe’s soft power. It is home to the continent’s spaceport where the European Space Agency launches its satellites.

Now, the French government is seeking exemptions from proposed EU rules that would restrict the use of bioenergy on the territory. The loophole would allow French Guiana to receive public financing to produce biofuels “especially for the space sector”.

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Local lawmakers argue the dispensation is necessary to protect French Guiana’s forestry sector and accelerate its energy transition. But campaigners have warned the exemption risks setting an incentive for increased logging in Europe’s corner of the Amazon forest.

“Thousands of hectares of Amazon forest could be cleared to be replaced with monocultures designed to produce energy… with the help of public financing,” Marine Calmet, a lawyer specialised in environmental law at NGOs Maiouri Nature Guyane and Wild Legal, told Climate Home News

Rules for biofuels

The EU considers burning wood a renewable energy and subsidises its production. Bioenergy accounts for almost 60% of the EU’s renewable energy mix. But a mounting body of evidence is showing that burning wood emits more carbon dioxide than coal per unit of energy – worsening climate change.

Regrown trees may eventually remove the emitted carbon from the atmosphere but the process could take decades to a century – time which scientists say the world doesn’t have to prevent the worst impacts of global heating. To start addressing the issue, the EU is negotiating stricter sustainability criteria for producing and using bioenergy.

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Draft legislation adopted by the EU parliament proposed to exclude “primary woody biomass” – untransformed wood such as whole trees, logs and stumps – from receiving renewable energy subsidies, with limited exceptions. It also caps the amount that can count as renewable energy to current use.

Biomass from agricultural crops can’t be considered renewable if they are grown on land of great biodiversity value or replacing primary and ancient forests.

But French lawmakers introduced an exemption for “an outermost region where forests cover at least 90% of the territory”. It would allow biomass fuels and biofuels “especially used in the space sector” and regardless of their origin to receive public financing if they incentivise the transition away from fossil fuels.

Analysts told Climate Home French Guiana is the only known EU region where this could apply.

The Guiana Space Center is surrounded by 90% of forest covered territory in the Amazon. (Photo: CNES/ESA/Arianespace/Optique Video CSG/P Baudon)

Biofuels in the rainforest

The loophole would allow France to count woody bioenergy production in French Guiana towards its own renewable energy target – despite a cap in the rest of the continent. In 2020, France was the only EU member state to fail to achieve its renewable energy target.

Authorities in French Guiana argue the EU’s proposed rules threatened the territory’s goal to move away from fossil fuels, including at the spaceport, which consumes 18% of the electricity produced locally.

Two biomass plants, totalling 9MW, are being built to produce electricity and cooling for operations at the space station. By 2030, French Guiana wants 25% of its electricity mix to come from woody biomass.

Thibault Lechat-Vega, a local official responsible for European affairs, told Climate Home that halting subsidies to the sector would require the territory to import wood pellets from Canada and China “at a catastrophic carbon cost”.

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“There is clearly no question of cutting the forest to produce biofuels but to support research to green the European space launcher,” he said, adding that the logging sector in French Guiana followed some of the world’s strictest sustainability criteria.

Waste from forest clearance to give way to agriculture and to build homes and infrastructure would be used, he explained.

But Calmet said these assurances were insufficient. “Elected officials are providing no guarantees about the origins of the biomass. On the contrary, they want to contravene all legal obligations designed to protect primary and old forests, and ecosystems with high biodiversity value,” she said.

Cleaner rockets

While rocket launches account for a tiny fraction of the space industry’s emissions, a number of companies are developing greener propellants, including using biofuels. In French Guiana, researchers are working to scale up biofuels production from micro algae.

Andreas Schütz, a chemical propellant expert at the German Aerospace Center (DLR), told Climate Home that producing rocket fuels from wood, using a process known as gasification, is feasible.

But Mike Mason, an engineer who researched biomass at Oxford University, said the process was “very expensive” and that burning wood to produce electricity remains inefficient.

“Wood is a renewable resource but burning it has a global warming impact,” said Mason, warning of the risk of creating a precedent for climate-damaging activities in the Amazon.

Negotiations on the draft rules are ongoing. Sources close to the discussions told Climate Home that while the EU Council showed willing to accommodate France’s request, the Commission was concerned about the biodiversity impacts.

France recently closed a consultation on requesting the waiver. The government said “minimal environmental guarantees” would be put in place to limit tree clearance for energy production purposes.

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Industry groups fear the ban could set a precedent for wider limitations across Europe on short-haul flying – once a symbol of cross-border liberalisation and now increasingly under fire.

French and European airports and regional airlines are laying out a new strategy to counter the ban on three French short-haul flight routes, which is in place for three years.

While they say a formal legal challenge is unlikely, they plan to invoke freedom of movement – one of four basic freedoms enshrined in European law – in informal reviews of the law expected to take place twice a year, and to lobby the government.

“We have the principle established by the EU of an open, liberalised market with the freedom to provide air services for any European airlines between any point within Europe,” one senior industry official said.

“And that’s basically to support the freedom of movement, people and citizens across Europe.”

The freedom of movement argument wades into one of the most sensitive topics in European politics, but faces considerable hurdles given its complexity, European sources said.

Limited impact

Industry bodies also claim the ban – which impacted far fewer routes than environmental groups had hoped – is ultimately ineffective in significantly curbing emissions.

Scara, a group representing regional French airlines that lobbied aggressively to water down the original ban, said it would also use review periods to claim that the ban has no real impact.

“We’ll embarrass people with the data,” said Willie Walsh, head of a global trade association for airlines, said on the sidelines of the Airline Economics conference in Dublin.

“If we banned all flights of less than 500 km in Europe…it would be less than 4% of the CO2 in Europe, right? I think there’s a perception that it would be 80%. It’s not a solution,” he told Reuters.

Of the EU’s 27 member states, 21 have total yearly emissions which are less than 4% of the EU’s total.

According to the Union of French Airports, which plans to complain to France’s Council of State about the ban, likely by the end of this month, the routes that will be banned represent only 0.23% of France’s air transport emissions, 0.04% of transport sector emissions and 0.02% of the air transport sector’s emissions.

Green campaign group Transport and Environment has produced similar estimates.

Calls for more measures

Green lobbyists say the figures show that the flight ban is too limited. They want wider restrictions, and are preparing to counter the industry’s efforts to reverse the ban.

Jo Dardenne, aviation director at campaign group Transport and Environment said the ban is an important signal to countries keen to reduce aviation emissions.

“It’s to show that… you have the right to actually cap emissions from your aviation sector,” she said.

She added: “The French domestic flight ban is an important message that more needs to be done to address aviation’s climate impact, but governments shouldn’t ignore the biggest chunk of the sector’s emissions linked to long haul flights. These are currently ignored or even exempted in most regulations addressing aviation emissions.”

Disappointed by the lack of ambition in the current rules, campaigners said they hope to go back to the original proposal of banning flights on routes with travel times of less than 6 hours.

“It’s hypocritical. They made the ban have no impact… they had a strong push to reduce the ambition,” Sarah Fayolle, a transport campaigner for Greenpeace in France, said.

The airline industry expects support from the EU in limiting the scope of the ban. “Europe has certainly recognized that the French law could be applied only in a limited way… So this is good,” Scara head Jean-Francois Dominiak said.

Fit for 55, a set of EU rules designed to tackle climate change and introduce reforms, will come into force across the bloc in the next two or three years and should have a more significant environmental impact, EU officials said.

But for now, the EU will stick to its approval, Henrik Hololei, director-general for mobility and transport at the European Commission told Reuters, adding the “strings attached” EU officials mandated, like review periods, make the ban reasonable.

Last year, the Danish government announced it would ban all domestic flights by 2030, unless they switch to zero-carbon fuels.

The post Airlines plot fight-back against France’s short-haul flights ban appeared first on Climate Home News.

However, the plan has no binding measures, which runs in contradiction with a new regulation adopted by EU countries a week ago.

“The watchword is clear: general mobilisation,” energy transition minister Agnès Pannier-Runacher said at a press conference announcing the plan.

The measures are the result of four months of discussion, following prime minister Élisabeth Borne’s June announcement of an energy saving programme for each sector of the French economy in response to the energy crisis and vulnerabilities in the national electricity network.

To reduce energy consumption by 10% in two years, the government has slated 15 key measures, from reducing heating to a maximum of 19C (66F) in offices to encouraging people to carpool.

The plan also includes specific measures for each of the nine economic and social sectors targeted: the state, companies and labour organisations, establishments open to the public and supermarkets, industry, accommodation, transport, digital and telecommunications, sport, and local authorities.

Additionally, private individuals will be advised to practice “eco gestures”, from reducing shower time to switching off household appliances when they are on standby for too long.

For the prime minister, it is a matter of acting “on the whole range of energy savings”.

No binding measures

While the government insists on the particular need to reduce energy consumption during peak hours – between 8am and noon and between 6-8pm – it does not set binding targets.

“There will not be such thing as a temperature police,” Pannier-Runacher told local radio RTL on Thursday.

However, in its roadmap presented on 14 September, the EU Commission laid out a binding target of a 5% reduction in electricity consumption during peak hours. And in July, EU member states also agreed to a 15% reduction in gas consumption following Russia’s military aggression in Ukraine.

The electricity demand reduction target was formally adopted on Thursday evening after a political agreement was reached last Friday among the EU’s 27 energy ministers. And although member states will remain free to choose the appropriate means of enforcement, the 5% objective is legally-binding.

Only Malta and Cyprus have been exempted.

“We are not on track”

While Pannier-Runacher argued on RTL that high energy prices would provide the impetus for companies and households to act, Thierry Bros, a professor of energy at Science-Po Paris was less optimistic.

Bros told Euractiv that despite high prices, TotalEnergies’ service stations had still seen a rush of customers, both accelerating tensions in supply and maintaining levels of consumption.

Energy-saving measures tend to be unpopular, he explained, especially if the reduction is to be maintained over two years. A 10% reduction in primary energy consumption would be equivalent to the drop in consumption seen during the Covid-19 lockdowns when the economy was slowing down.

Bros also pointed out that France’s rate of reducing consumption has been 1% annually over the last ten years. If France intends to reach the targets it has set itself, “we will have to go five times faster over the next two years,” he said.

“We are not on track,”  said the professor, concluding that without binding measures, meeting the 10% objective “is not possible”.

According to the government, the package of measures should nevertheless reduce consumption by around 50 terawatt hours (TWh) per year.

This is also a first step towards carbon neutrality, which will require a 40% reduction in energy consumption by 2050, Pannier-Runacher said on RTL.

The government, moreover, insists that measures will not have a negative effect on the economy.

“Energy saving does not mean […] choosing to reduce production”, Borne said at the press conference.

This article was first published in Euractiv. It has been lightly amended for clarity.

The post Turn down the heating: France unveils ‘ambitious’ energy saving plan appeared first on Climate Home News.

“Making France a great green nation, that is our project,” Macron tweeted on the night of his victory, after he received 58.5% of the votes against 40.5% for Le Pen – a lower margin than in the 2017 election, when he got 66% of the votes. 

In the election campaign, Macron declared he would make France “the first major nation to abandon gas, oil and coal.”

While climate advocates are breathing a sigh of relief that Le Pen – who threatened to dismantle wind turbines – lost, Macron’s climate record to date has fallen short of the rhetoric.

Coming to power in 2017 on a promise to “make climate great again”, Macron inherited an underperforming state. France was successfully sued for failing to meet its 2015-18 emissions objectives and is is the only EU member state to have missed its 2020 renewable energy target.

After five years in power, the government remains off track to meet its 40% emissions reduction target by 2030 compared to 1990 levels – a goal which it will need to ramp up to align with the EU’s collective goal of at least 55% cuts.

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Macron has said he wants to accelerate the construction of offshore wind farms, develop nuclear power and a large-scale programme to retrofit homes and make them more energy-efficient. But the deployment of renewables and uptake of electric transport has been slow.

France has only built one offshore wind farm. Macron announced this year that France will build 50 offshore wind farms by 2050, with 40GW of capacity. 

France’s weak record on deploying renewables is largely due to administrative hurdles and court challenges, especially for wind farm projects, Nicolas Berghmans, Iddri’s lead European affairs and climate expert, told Climate Home News. The time required for the installation of a wind farm in France is around eight years – significantly higher than in other EU countries, he said.

In 2021, a French court awarded damages to a Belgian couple who claimed that a wind turbine near their house in southern France caused a range of negative health impacts, referred to as “wind syndrome”, including headaches, insomnia and depression. 

Construction has started on offshore wind farms “so we should continue to see an acceleration of renewable energy deployment in the coming years,” said Berghmans.

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has forced many EU countries to reconsider their long-standing opposition to nuclear power as they seek to reduce their dependence on Russian fossil fuels. France has relied heavily on nuclear energy for decades. 

The country derives around 70% of its electricity from nuclear energy and is home to 56 nuclear power reactors. In February, the government announced plans to build six new reactors and to consider building a further eight. 

Campaigners are not convinced.

Any new nuclear energy project will be expensive and not come online until 2035, said Raphael Hanoteaux, a senior policy advisor on gas politics at E3G. “Solar, wind and storage are already cheaper than nuclear, and will be even cheaper in 12 to 15 years,” he told Climate Home News.

“French politicians are obsessed with the nuclear industry, which diverts attention from real solutions,” Neil Makaroff, EU policy officer at Climate Action Network France, told Climate Home News. “Not a euro of the [coronavirus] recovery plan has been dedicated to renewables. A bad signal.”

“The existing nuclear power plant fleet is quickly ageing, as its underperformance this winter clearly showed, and it is today unlikely that it will be replaced with new reactors with an equivalent generation capacity,” said Berghmans. “Renewable production will have to close this large gap.”

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If Macron is to achieve his goal of reducing France’s reliance on Russian fossil fuels, he should focus on transport and housing, Sebastien Treyer, executive director of the think tank Iddri, told Climate Home News.

Enabling access to electric mobility and ensuring large-scale energy efficiency in buildings should be priorities for Macron’s short-term climate strategy, he said.

Electric mobility is on the rise in France, but it is not growing as strongly as in other EU countries, such as the Netherlands and Norway, said Berghmans. This is partly due to delays in deploying charging infrastructure, as well as to insufficient incentives for the uptake of electric vehicles, he said. French citizens rely heavily on cars – with 75% using a car for their daily commute – and investments in cycling and public transport are lagging, he added. 

A carbon tax on fuel has been frozen since 2018, when a proposed hike triggered widespread protests and gave birth to the “gilets jaunes” movement.

“The shadow of yellow vests still looms large. It’s likely Macron’s new government will remain extremely cautious about reintegrating the carbon tax to its arsenal of measures,” Lola Vallejo, climate programme director at Iddri, told Climate Home News.

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The country’s citizens’ assembly has identified mandatory minimum energy performance standards for buildings as a key measure to force deep renovation of buildings but this measure has been watered down by the government, said Makaroff. 

“Renovation efforts are still timid considering the triple menace of climate change, the cost of living crisis, and the Russia-Ukraine war,” Vallejo said. 

“Public support for [this] is still insufficient and poorly targeted to the deep energy renovations that are needed to achieve climate targets,” said Berghmans. The government should offer more solutions and alternatives to poorer households, whose financial balances are directly impacted by rising fuel prices, he said.

The post Macron promises to abandon gas, oil and coal, but will he deliver? appeared first on Climate Home News.

On Wednesday, the day after the assembly’s final verdict, members of parliament submitted more than 4,000 amendments to the government’s proposed climate and resilience law.

Mathilde Panot, of the left-wing party France Insoumise, told Climate Home News: “The ambition is extremely weak and doesn’t respond to the needs of our time… They made a mountain of it and in the end there is only a mouse.”

The bill creates the legal framework to implement just under half of the French climate assembly’s proposals. It seeks to accelerate France’s energy transition and is anticipated to be Emmanuel Macron’s government last major reform ahead of elections in 2022.

The climate assembly of 150 citizens was tasked to come up with measures to reduce the country’s emissions at least 40% by 2030 from 1990 levels “in a spirit of social justice”. It was created in the wake of the “yellow vest” protests that were sparked by a 2018 hike in fuel tax.

But those who took part in the novel democratic exercise, which concluded last month, have been left unimpressed by the government’s proposal to act on their recommendations.

In a detailed assessment of the climate bill, the assembly scored the text 3.3 out of 10 for reflecting their recommendations. Of the assembly’s 150 members, 123 took part in the vote.

Asked whether the bill will allow France to come close to reducing its emissions by 40% by 2030, compared with 1990, their response was even harsher: averaging just 2.5 out of 10. Nearly 60% of respondents described measures proposed by the governments as “unsatisfactory” to meet the climate goal.

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Since the creation of the assembly in October 2019, France as part of the European Union agreed to deepen emissions cuts to 55% between 1990 and 2030. Campaigners say the proposed bill won’t be enough to meet the 40% goal let alone 55%.

This is a concern backed by the government’s official climate advisors. In its assessment, the high council for the climate found that the 21 proposals they rated would have “a potentially limited impact on the level of emissions” either because of being too narrow in scope or because their implementation will come too late.

It added that parliament would need to increase the ambition of the proposed measures.

Overall, the creation of the assembly was welcomed by participants, who scored a 6 for how useful it had been to address climate change and 8 for whether this model could improve French democracy.

The assembly’s severe judgment comes after some of its members accused president Macron of backsliding on his promise to legislate on key recommendations.

Macron committed in June last year to submit 146 of the assembly’s 149 propositions to the French parliament or to a referendum “without filter”.

Panot said the bill had “a democratic veneer” but did not respect the propositions made by the assembly, with every recommendation concerning forests excluded from the text for example.

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A spokesperson for Matthieu Orphelin, a former Macron supporter who co-founded a new centre-left and ecological political grouping, told Climate Home the number of amendments to the text was “huge” and proved that its ambition was “insufficient”. Orphelin himself submitted 88 amendments, including five recommendations made by the assembly that were left out in the bill.

He said pressure was mounting from progressive lawmakers and campaigners but expected the government “not to budge”.

Speaking to broadcaster France info on Tuesday, Barbara Pompili, minister of the ecological transition, said she knew members of the assembly wanted the bill to be more ambitious.

“We can have the highest ambition but if we can’t implement it, it’s useless,” she said.

Pompili said the assembly’s rating system had been “quite biased”, citing the fact some citizens scored the government with zero on every proposal while recommendations included in their entirety in the law averaged at 6. “I don’t know how we could ever get a 10.”

“I think some of the citizens have taken a political approach… many have seized the urgency to act. They are now voting on the urgency more than on the measures that they have themselves proposed,” she said.

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In an open letter to president Macron last month, 110 NGOs said the climate bill “did not add up” to the level of ambition required for France to meet its climate goals and urged the government to reconsider the assembly’s recommendations.

The Economic and Social Council, a consultative chamber that advises the government on new laws, said that claiming the bill is part of efforts to meet the 2050 long-term goal was “excessive”.

A special commission formed of a cross-party group of lawmakers have started to work on the proposed text and from Monday, the group is due to start assessing which amendments will be eligible for discussions.

Members of the commission have already shown disagreements over whether recommendations by the citizens’ assembly that weren’t included in the bill could be proposed as amendments, according to Le Monde.

The text is expected to be discussed in the plenary of the French national assembly on 29 March. With a majority in parliament, Macron’s party La Republique En Marche (LRM) and its centrist allies the MoDem, are expected to push the text through but revisions could be made along the way.

The government hopes the text can be presented to a vote before the end of the summer.

The post French climate bill set for rocky ride after citizens’ assembly slams weak ambition appeared first on Climate Home News.

The administrative court ordered the government to pay a symbolic €1 fine to the four green groups that brought the case after France exceeded its 2015-2018 carbon budget. Campaigners described the ruling as “a historic victory for the climate”.

The court will return in the spring to decide whether to order the French government to take more stringent carbon-cutting measures, giving ministers another two months to demonstrate what they are doing to address climate change.

Cécile Duflot, director of Oxfam France, one of the four plaintiffs, said: “Today’s decision is a historic victory for climate justice. For the first time, a French court has ruled that the state can be held responsible for its climate commitments.”

“This sets an important legal precedent and can be used by people affected by the climate crisis to defend their rights,” she added.

An Oxfam spokesperson told Climate Home News that the case could allow French citizens to claim compensation from the government if they can prove the state’s climate inaction damages them personally.

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Others played down the significance of the judgement. Arnaud Gossement, law professor at the University of Paris, said: “It is difficult to rejoice in a judgement which admits only a fairly minimal fault on the part of the state.” He noted the plaintiffs’ demand for the government to pay reparations for environmental damages had been rejected by the court.

Law professor Julien Bétaille suggested the judgement was hardly damaging to the government. “So what? A ‘symbolic’ euro,” he tweeted.

Greenpeace’s lawyer Clément Capdebos defended campaigners’ enthusiasm, tweeting that the ruling was much more than just symbolic. Oxfam France’s lawyer Arié Alimi insisted the ruling established important principles on the government’s environmental obligations and compensation for its failures.

A n’en pas douter, il s’agit là d’une analyse objective et rigoureuse du jugement rendu par le TA. Plus sérieusement : carence fautive de l’Etat, préjudice écologique caractérisé, obligation générale de lutte contre le changement climatique. Symbolique ? Soyons sérieux. https://t.co/p7BSl0G5nX

— Clément Capdebos (@CCapdebos) February 3, 2021

France exceeded its 2015-18 carbon budget by 4%, emitting 18 million tonnes of CO2 equivalent a year more than planned. The transport sector exceeded its emissions limit by 11% and the building sector by 23%.

In response to the ruling, the French government acknowledged that it had failed to meet its climate objectives but that since 2017, when Emmanuel Macron succeeded Francois Hollande as president, it had “significantly stepped up” its climate efforts.

A draft climate bill to implement some of the recommendations of France’s citizens’ assembly is due to be presented to ministers on 10 February. The draft text has been criticised by campaigners as weakening the assembly’s ambition.

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The number of climate litigation cases worldwide has nearly doubled since 2017, according to a recent report by the UN Environment Programme. As of July 2020, at least 1,550 climate change cases had been filed in 38 countries.

In December 2019, the Dutch supreme court ordered its government to strengthen its 2020 emissions target, in a case brought by Urgenda.

In July 2020, the Irish supreme court quashed Ireland’s climate plan, ruling it did not specifically lay out how the country would meet its 2050 climate targets.

Environmentalists in Belgium have launched a similar case, pressuring the Belgian government to develop a more detailed climate plan. The case will be heard on 16 March.

The post Court condemns French government over climate inaction with symbolic €1 fine appeared first on Climate Home News.

The government has unveiled the draft of a long-anticipated climate law to accelerate France’s energy transition. It creates the legal framework to translate just under half the climate assembly’s proposals into law.

The remaining measures could be still be acted upon separately, with many requiring implementation at the EU level.

French president Emmanuel Macron committed in June last year to submit 146 of the assembly’s 149 propositions to the French parliament or to a referendum “without filter” – comments he has since rowed back from.

“I’m not going to say that because these 150 citizens have written something that it’s the Bible,” he told French media Brut in an interview in December.

The government said the climate law would usher “an unprecedented transformation in the history of France” towards “a carbon neutral society that is more resilient, just and fair”.

It added the bill was a response to “the promise of a renewed social pact between citizens and those governing them” in the form of an environmental and climate transition.

The assembly of 150 citizens chosen at random was launched following “yellow vest” protests that were sparked by a 2018 hike in fuel tax. It was tasked to come up with measures to reduce the country’s emissions at least 40% by 2030 from 1990 levels “in a spirit of social justice”.

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But climate campaigners have accused the government of watering down and throwing out a number of the assembly’s propositions and failing to propose a bill that will allow France to meet its climate goals.

Last month, France as part of the European Union agreed to deepen emissions cuts to 55% between 1990 and 2030 – a target campaigners say France will not be able to meet with the bill in its existing form.

Grégoire Fraty, one of the citizens to have taken part in the assembly and a founding member of ‘Les 150’ – a pressure group to ensure its propositions are followed through – told Climate Home News he had “mixed feelings” about the text.

“There are some very good things and it’s going in the right direction but there isn’t enough ambition,” he said, adding that a number of measures had been “truncated” and the law was incomplete.

“It’s a shame,” he said. “With this truncated climate law, we are not guaranteed to meet the climate objectives for 2030.”

Under the law, the government proposed to make it illegal for landlords to rent energy inefficient homes from 2028 but stopped short of requiring an efficiency makeover for all homes and buildings by 2040, as the assembly recommended.

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Measures to curb emissions from aviation were also weakened.

The government agreed to phase out domestic flights on routes where rail alternatives under two and a half hours are available; less than the assembly’s proposed 4-hour threshold.

An eco-tax on aviation to reflect the sector’s environmental impact and incentivise low-carbon alternatives will only be increased if air travel rebounds to pre-pandemic levels in 2019 and the issue is not addressed at the European level.

And a ban on the construction and expansion of new airports has several caveats and comes as Marseille airport gets the green light for a large expansion project. Last year, the environment authority had asked the project developers to demonstrate how the expansion was compatible with France’s 2050 carbon neutrality goal.

Meanwhile, the inclusion in the law of ecocide as a punishable offense – one of the assembly’s flagship recommendations – has quickly become one of the most contested measures amid Macron’s own ranks and the business lobby.

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Campaigners said the law did not put enough pressure on business, focusing instead on self-regulation, voluntary action and information for consumers.

In a statement, Friends of the Earth accused the government of “sabotage” of the assembly’s work. Climate Action Network France (Can France) denounced a “blatant lack of ambition”.

Anne Bringault, an energy transition campaigner with Can France, wrote in Alternatives Economiques the law was “a declaration of intent” but included few measures to implement immediately – leaving the heavy lifting to beyond the next election cycle in 2022.

France’s national council for the energy transition, which advises the environmental ministry, is due to publish its assessment of the draft law at the end of the month.

The text will be presented to the cabinet on 10 February and is expected to be discussed by French lawmakers from the end of March. The citizens’ assembly is due to meet in March to review the bill.

The post French draft climate law criticised for weakening ambition of citizens’ assembly appeared first on Climate Home News.

More than 70 heads of state, plus business and civil society leaders, will take the stage of a virtual climate summit on 12 December – five years after countries agreed in Paris to limit global heating “well below 2C” and strive for 1.5C by the end of the century.

The event is the first test of the Paris deal, under which countries agreed to ramp up their – collectively insufficient – contributions every five years to meet the temperature goals.

Since then, emissions have continued to rise and climate impacts have intensified. Many governments were already running late with their climate planning when the Covid crisis hit, diverting resources into healthcare, social security and business bailouts.

With no UN climate negotiations being held this year and the Cop26 climate talks in Glasgow, UK, postponed to November 2021, the UN, the UK and France, with support from Chile and Italy, are co-hosting the summit to galvanise political leadership.

“Many people are looking for positivity… and a look forward to 2021 as a year of change for the better,” Marcel Beukeboom, climate envoy for the Netherlands, told Climate Home News, in anticipation of the event.

“We need political momentum… that is what is much needed,” added Agripina Jenkins, a climate diplomat for Costa Rica.

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While every national leader has been invited to submit a pre-recorded speech of up to two minutes, only those that can demonstrate increased ambition will be guaranteed a slot, with priority going to the most transformative announcements.

That could mean a strengthened 2030 target, a net zero commitment, post-2020 climate finance pledge or more robust programme to adapt to climate impacts. “There will be no space for general statements,” according to a logistical note seen by Climate Home.

Under the Paris Agreement, countries are expected to submit new or improved 2030 climate plans and publish long-term decarbonisation strategies before the end of the year.

As of Monday, only 16 countries representing 4.6% of global emissions had formally submitted a new or updated 2030 target to the UN, according to the World Resources Institute.

A number of countries are expected to come forward with enhanced climate ambition at the summit and edge the world closer to its climate goals. Formal submissions to the UN could follow in the next few weeks.

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There has been movement from key players on long-term commitments in recent months.

China set its sights on carbon neutrality by 2060, while Japan and South Korea unveiled 2050 net zero goals. Joe Biden was elected as US president on a platform to decarbonise the world’s largest economy by 2050.

If those promises are followed through, global warming could be limited to 2.1C by the end of the century, according to analysis by Climate Action Tracker, putting the Paris goals within striking distance.

Sébastien Treyer, executive director of the French climate think-tank Iddri, described “cautious hope” at signs the deal signed in Paris was delivering greater emissions cuts “at the slow pace of change that characterises international relations but also with sudden accelerations like the one that we have seen in the last six months”.

This long-term ambition is yet to be reflected into the world’s largest emitters’ shorter-term targets, he noted, adding the political dynamic for enhancing ambition was “fragile” and much more work was need to make these pledges “an economic reality”.

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While a host of announcements are expected throughout the five-hour summit, its success rests on what large emitters are ready to deliver.

The EU is on a tight schedule to agree on cutting emissions by at least 55% from 1990 to 2030, up from 40% currently, at a Council meeting starting two days before the summit. Thorny discussions on the union’s recovery package risk derailing the climate agenda.

Chinese sources have told Climate Home Beijing is on track to present its updated 2030 climate plan before the end of the year, but it is not clear whether president Xi Jinping will reveal further details at this forum or simply reiterate the net zero pledge.

Last week, the UK Cop26 host accepted the recommendation of its climate advisors and agreed to cut emissions 68% between 1990 and 2030.“We’re going to challenge world leaders not only to match our ambition but to set out exactly how they plan to do so,” prime minister Boris Johnson said in a video message ahead of the summit.

While Donald Trump is not expected to be part of the event, and Biden is not able to participate as president-elect, US sub-national players and incoming members of the new administration may make an appearance.

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Among some climate campaigners, there is skepticism another leaders’ summit will deliver anything else than a string of promises and speeches.

Sriram Madhusoodanan, deputy campaigns director at Corporate Accountability told Climate Home: “We’ve seen a number of big fanfare summit since Paris with cycle of speeches by heads of states but not really anything meaningful come out in terms of the demands that civil society has been talking about to stay at 1.5C.”

Without the possibility for civil society to directly respond to leader’s announcements, the summit could be a space for greenwashing, he added.

While the event may draw attention to “hopeful signs,” “we are not transitioning at the pace required to meet our goal,”  Yamide Dagnet, director of climate negotiations at the World Resources Institute, told Climate Home. Countries havee yet to deliver coherent action that includes emissions cuts, adaptation and support for vulnerable nations, she said.

The Cop26 unit has asked donor countries to bring new finance pledges, but there are few signs of that materialising. The UK is cutting its own aid budget in the wake of the pandemic.

“This is where I am more worried and disappointed,” said Dagnet. “At a time when inequality and poverty are increasing… we are falling short on solidarity.”

The post ‘Looking for positivity’: Parisversaire party to revive momentum on climate appeared first on Climate Home News.

At a hydrogen summit this week, finance minister Bruno Le Maire unveiled his vision for clean hydrogen and emphasised that he hopes to partner with Germany on this.

“I hope that we will manage to find a joint Franco-German and then a European project for hydrogen,” Le Maire told French media outlet CNews ahead of the meeting in Berlin.

This week Le Maire revealed that almost a third of France’s €100 billion ($119bn) coronavirus recovery package will be spent on green energy policies, with €7 billion going towards the development of carbon-free hydrogen for transport and the industrial sector by 2030. 

Germany unveiled its national hydrogen strategy in June. The country has earmarked €9 billion for the expansion of hydrogen production as part of a €130 billion economic stimulus package, with the aim of ramping up its capacity to 5 GW by 2030 and 10 GW by 2040.

Carbon-free hydrogen is produced by electrolysis. Electricity from renewable sources or nuclear is used to split water into hydrogen and oxygen. It is expected to play a pivotal role in the global transition to net zero emissions, particularly as a solution to decarbonise the steel and shipping industries, the International Energy Agency (IEA) said in a report published on Thursday. 

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France aims to install 6.5 GW of clean hydrogen production capacity by 2030 and start building electrolyser factories in 2021, the government said.

The government has said its investment in carbon-free hydrogen will cut France’s CO2 output by 6 million tonnes, the equivalent of Paris’ annual emissions.

“France is convinced that carbon-free hydrogen will be one of the great revolutions of our century: for the decarbonisation of the industrial sector, to develop and deploy emission-free mobility solutions, to store energy and provide additional responses to the intermittency of renewable energies,” Le Maire said in France’s hydrogen strategy.

Nicola De Blasio, a senior fellow in energy technology innovation at the Harvard Kennedy School, told Climate Home News it would take more than two countries to build a functioning European hydrogen market.

“You need to create a demand, you need to build the infrastructure… this will require coordination at the EU level,” De Blasio said. 

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A global race to ramp up production of the clean fuel has begun with the EU Commission unveiling its hydrogen strategy in July, which aims to increase capacity to 40 GW and generate 10 million tonnes of clean hydrogen by 2030.

The EU estimates that by 2050 clean hydrogen could meet 24% of the world’s energy demand. But it is a long road ahead. Today 96% of hydrogen supply comes from fossil fuels, according to a report by the Rocky Mountain Institute. Hydrogen from fossil fuels generates more than 800 Mt of CO2, comparable to the emissions of the UK and Indonesia combined, according to the IEA. 

EU Commission Vice President Frans Timmermans, who presides over the European Green New Deal, has championed hydrogen as a renewable fuel that can easily be integrated into existing energy infrastructure, as opposed to wind and solar which require the construction of new farms and grids. 

“There are millions of kilometres of natural gas pipeline, and a significant fraction is completely compatible with hydrogen use,” José Miguel Bermúdez Menéndez, an energy technology analyst at the IEA, told Climate Home News. 

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While Germany plans to generate hydrogen from renewable sources, such as offshore wind and hydropower, France is a major proponent of nuclear power, which makes up over 70% of the country’s energy mix. In an interview with French media BFM TV, Le Maire described himself as a “nuclear advocate.” When asked whether France would generate clean hydrogen using nuclear, Le Maire said the fuel remains relevant.

Germany plans to close all its nuclear power plants by 2022, following mass public support for their closure amid safety concerns. 

This should not hinder EU-wide collaboration on hydrogen, said De Blasio, citing Italy as an example. Italy closed its nuclear plants decades ago but continues to import electricity from nuclear. “How many consumers know where their electricity comes from?” De Blasio said.

The EU could meet most of its hydrogen demand internally, but the bloc must move fast to compete internationally, De Blasio added, noting that China has started to look into hydrogen. 

During his interview with CNews, De Maire warned that the EU should not make the “same mistakes” as it did with solar panels by allowing China to dominate the manufacturing side. 

“If China is going to put its industrial might behind hydrogen, like it did with electric vehicles and solar panels, we could have a similar situation,” De Blasio said.

The post France seeks German collaboration on hydrogen in EU green recovery appeared first on Climate Home News.

In France and the UK, citizens’ assemblies set up to make climate policy recommendations have moved online to continue their work amid restrictions to contain the spread of the virus.

Both countries are among the worst affected by the pandemic. More than 15,700 people have died in France and 12,100 in the UK as of Thursday, according to the World Health Organisation.

France’s citizens’ assembly was launched following “yellow vest” protests that were sparked by a 2018 hike in fuel tax. It was tasked to come up with measures to reduce the country’s emissions at least 40% by 2030 from 1990 levels “in a spirit of social justice”.

Its 150 members, drawn from a cross-section of society, met in person over five weekends starting in October 2019. Then Covid-19 hit and the authorities ordered people to stay home and avoid non-essential journeys.

Undeterred, the citizens assembly took its penultimate session online over two days at the start of April. The agenda was adapted to discuss the economic and social consequences of the coronavirus pandemic and how recovery measures could support climate action.

C’est parti pour une première journée de travail en ligne avec les 150 membres de la #ConventionCitoyenne pour le #climat

Heureux de les retrouver dans cet hémicycle virtuel

De retour dès que possible au @lecese pour la session #7, session finale de la Convention pic.twitter.com/UMs4TLDQyI

— Ivassenko Thomas (@ThomasIvassenko) April 3, 2020

Following its online session, the assembly decided to send 50 of the 150 propositions it is working on to the French government, in the hope of influencing the Covid-19 recovery plan.

The propositions, obtained by Climate Home News, were not made public as they still need to be voted on at one last session.

Some of the French assembly’s draft proposals

• An investment plan for public transport: encouraging ride-sharing and cycling, modernising railway infrastructure, reducing VAT on train tickets, banning the sales of new private vehicles emitting more than 110 gCO2/km from 2025 and more than 90 gCO2/km from 2030, and creating more incentives for electric, hybrid and hydrogen vehicles
• An investment plan for agriculture: promoting local food networks, ensuring 50% of agricultural land is developed according to agro-ecology practices by 2040
• Reducing the carbon footprint of manufacturing and production by encouraging local distribution networks, reducing pollution and incentivising sustainable approaches
• Scaling up the recycling sector by 2023 and promoting the repair of products
• Improving the energy efficiency of 20 million homes and making energy efficiency renovation on buildings compulsory by 2040
• Promoting renewable energy production of small units to ensure all citizens, businesses and local authorities can contribute to green electricity production from 2023
• Containing urban sprawl
• Banning advertising for the most polluting products based on a CO2 rating score and encouraging public messaging against excessive consumption
• Ensuring public support for innovation is aligned with goals to reduce emissions and boost clean technologies by 2025
• Reforming the EU’s commercial politics to promote local distribution networks and avoid over-consumption

The assembly warned the French government not to repeat the mistakes made after the 2008 financial crisis, which saw investments in carbon-intensive and fossil fuel industries.

Instead, it urged the government to ensure investments made as part of the recovery effort are “socially acceptable” and benefit green solutions and the energy transition.

It called for recovery measures to prepare for “a different social and economic model, that is more human and more resilient in the face of future crisis” by reducing France’s dependence on imports, boosting jobs and reducing emissions.

Laurence Tubiana, co-president of the assembly’s governance committee and a key architect of the Paris Agreement, praised the assembly members for their patience in taking their work online.

“Sometimes the organisation of our citizens’ assembly for the climate is like crossing the Amazon without a map,” she said.

South Korea to implement Green New Deal after ruling party election win

The UK’s assembly is also moving online to continue its work to draw up measures for the UK to achieve net zero emissions by 2050.

The last of four weekends due to be held at the end of March was cancelled following the coronavirus outbreak. Instead the 110-member assembly will split its final work across three weekends of virtual Zoom meetings, starting 18/19 April and finishing 16/17 May.

Sarah Allan, of Involve, a public participation charity commissioned by the UK Parliament to facilitate the assembly, said members were keen to finalise their work despite Covid-19 restrictions.

Test calls were held with all participants to ensure everyone was able to navigate the online meeting software. Two people had to take a break after being affected by coronavirus. One other member has been suffering from medical issues not related to Covid-19.

“But nobody has dropped out or doesn’t want to take part anymore,” Allan said.

The UK assembly’s final sessions will focus on electricity generation, negative emissions technologies to remove carbon from the atmosphere and finalising its recommendations. Speakers and experts have pre-recorded presentations to be discussed in smaller break-out groups.

Assembly members will also be given the opportunity to discuss the impact of the pandemic. Allan said the assembly’s experts were still discussing how best to approach the issue.

“We are talking almost weekly with the French assembly,” she said.

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According to a survey by pollsters Opinium, 48% of the British public agrees the government should respond “with the same urgency to climate change as it has with Covid-19” – 28% of respondents said it shouldn’t.

The model for holding citizens’ assemblies, even at times of crisis, has gathered international interest.

“I have emails in my inbox from Canada and Australia wanting to talk about how we are holding the assembly online,” said Allan.

But the pandemic has also stopped some assemblies in their tracks.

Teresa Ribera, Spain’s vice prime minister and minister for the ecological transition, told Climate Home News the launch of the country’s citizens’ assembly on climate change had had to be postponed.

“We realised that it didn’t make much sense to start working on this in a moment when we have stated the importance of social distancing,” she said. “But all the preparatory work was done so we will be in a position to launch it as soon as the general circumstances allow us to do so.”

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The 31 October meeting was the first time representatives of both houses met to discuss adaptation. At the conference, politicians, climate experts, farmers, activists and regular citizens expressed concern that policymakers were not doing enough to prepare for the impacts of climate change.

According to a report published by France’s Senate in June, 2C of warming above pre-industrial levels could deal a profound blow to France by 2050.

The report claims heatwaves are set to strike more often and longer, and wildfires – a phenomenon only experienced in the Mediterranean region – could unfurl across the whole country several weeks a year from 2060.

Drier soil will also make it significantly harder to grow food, while sea level rise threatens to engulf the coast, ski-stations in the Alps and Pyrenees will fall prey to disrepair and Asian tiger mosquitos carrying tropical diseases could rear their heads, it said.

The report warned some regions would have it harder than others, with touristic regions in the mountains or on the coast particularly vulnerable.

“Change is here and it will accelerate,” transport minister Elisabeth Borne said.

IEA World Energy Outlook outlines 1.5C scenario

“Only this summer our country experienced two intense heat waves. They deeply disrupted our collective and individual lives. I am thinking of the postponed national exams, of the slowed down trains, of the cancelled sports events. Electricity production was also disrupted.”

“Nowadays we speak of these events as ‘extreme’. Unfortunately, they will become less and less exceptional,” she said.

Both the report’s commissioner, senator Ronan Dantec, and Frédérique Tufnell, a deputy for the Charente-Maritime region, called on the national assembly and senate to hold a debate on the country’s strategy to adapt to the climate crisis.

Tufnell said the country should consider a framework adaptation law – “though the decision depends on the government,” the deputy from president Macron’s La Republique en Marche party told Climate Home News.

Bruno Charles, vice-president of Lyon, said France had yet to develop “a common culture around what climate change means for a 2000-year-old town like ours. We’re proud to be part of the Unesco heritage list – though in 100 years, living conditions will have been turned upside down.”

“How will five century-old buildings fare in the face of 50 days of heatwaves at 50 degrees?” he asked. “How do you create social housing in the knowledge that there’ll be summers at 50 degrees during 60 days? How do you get around in a town where the asphalt is melting?”

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Despite two national adaptation plans in 2011 and 2018, the country has so far failed to come up with an adequate adaptation strategy, participants agreed.

Charles slammed a general lack of political willpower to address the looming problems. “We have a generation of mayors and presidents who were born before the awareness of climate change and think that technical solutions will fix things,” he lamented.

Vivian Despoues, chief strategist at the Institute for Climate Economics (I4CE), pointed to the record rush to buy fans and air conditioners in June as evidence that the country was ill-prepared for heat waves.

Other participants pointed to instances where the impacts of climate change were not being factored into decision-making.

Antoine Bonduelle, head of Climate Action Network France, criticised plans to operate an electric shuttle to Beauvais airport without questioning the logic of air travel.

“Everything is great!” he said of the shuttle. “But as soon as it comes to talking about the low-cost economic model, we find ourselves in the company of politicians who are airport lobbyists. They’re not there to say: ‘Let’s imagine how can we reduce the airport in the years to come’.”

EU plots climate deal with China

There was strong support to restore ecosystems to simultaneously cut emissions and adapt to climate change –  also called nature-based solutions – in the run-up to the International Union for Conservation of Nature’s World Conservation Congress, due to take place in Marseille in June 2020.

Sylvie Feuillette, a spokesperson for the water agency in Seine Normandie, said that something as a simple as restoring hedges on agricultural land could “improve soil quality, retain water, limit streams and dependency on pesticides”.

Deputy Tufnell, the commissioner of a January report on wetlands, likewise urged the country to protect these “lands of the future” that offer many benefits, including water filtration, carbon absorption, or buffer zones for flooding.

“Two-thirds of the wetlands [in France] disappeared during the 20th century,” she pointed out.

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The world’s largest emitter of greenhouse gas, China committed to enhance its national contribution under the Paris Agreement to reflect its “highest possible ambition”.

In a statement issued with France and UN chief António Guterres on Saturday, China committed to “update” its climate target “in a manner representing a progression beyond the current one”.  It also vowed to publish a long term decarbonisation strategy by next year.

Under the Paris Agreement, countries have agreed to update their climate plans to achieve the emission reductions needed to limit global temperature rise to 2C of warming. There is growing international pressure for this to happen by 2020 and some observers believed the statement indicates China will move by next year.

“To my knowledge, China had not publicly indicated that it was planning to enhance its [climate plans] with ambition,” said David Waskow, director of the World Resources Institute’s international climate initiative.

Waskow described the agreement between China and France as “quite significant” and a clear expression of ambition on climate action.

“That’s what the EU has not actually come forward to say,” he said.

Profile: UN chief António Guterres fights nationalism in climate quest

Li Shuo, senior climate policy officer at Greenpeace China, told Reuters that China’s commitment to update its climate targets rather than reaffirm existing ones suggests political will in Beijing to take more ambitious carbon-cutting measures.

“I think [Chinese leaders] get the idea that they need to enhance their ambition, not only for their image as international climate leaders but also for larger geopolitical reasons, such as supporting multilateralism,” he said.

In the statement, France and China also called on countries to “continue to uphold multilateralism and inject political impetus into the international cooperation on jointly fighting climate change”.

The statement was issued on the sidelines of a G20 summit in Osaka, Japan, where 19 leaders reaffirmed their commitment to implementing the Paris pact. In a separate paragraph, the US reiterated its plan to withdraw from the deal, arguing “it disadvantages American workers and taxpayers”.

Analysis: Which countries have a net zero carbon goal?

Hours later, national delegates met in Abu Dhabi in preparation for a climate action summit to be held at the UN’s New York headquarters in September.

The UN chief is convening the summit to spur greater efforts to limit global heating to 1.5C – the goal demanded by vulnerable countries.

So far, the EU has nothing to show at the summit after four eastern European countries blocked a consensus to achieve carbon neutrality by 2050 at the last EU Council meeting.

This is the second time France and China have issued a joint statement on climate change at the G20. In a statement in Argentina last year, the two countries expressed their “highest political commitment” to implementing the Paris Agreement.

This article was amended. It originally said China had pledged to update its NDC before 2020.

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In its first report, the independent High Council for the Climate found greenhouse gas emissions had fallen just 1.1% across 2015-18. The transport and buildings sectors, in particular, were lagging behind expectations.

It comes as parliament considers draft climate legislation with the national target to go carbon neutral by 2050.

“The urgency imposed by the climate crisis requires rapid and in-depth action,” said Corinne Le Quéré, president of the council, in a statement ahead of the report’s launch on Tuesday.

“France’s commitments are ambitious, but at the current rate, they are unlikely to be met. As long as action on climate change remains on the periphery of public policies, France will not achieve carbon neutrality by 2050. Achieving that objective requires that emissions reduction is a national priority.”

Gilets jaunes: ‘We were ecologists before the capitalists’

Experts on the 11-strong council recommended strengthening a carbon tax and systematically assessing every law, project and investment against the long-term climate goal.

Government should also make sure the transition is fair and supports jobs, the council said. President Emmanuel Macron was forced to backtrack on a diesel tax hike last year after it triggered widespread protests and gave birth to the “gilets jaunes” movement.

In an article for The Conversation last week, Le Quéré and economist Céline Guivarch compared the challenges for France and the UK, which is also committing to net zero emissions by 2050.

Both wealthy economies have similar carbon footprints per person, but farming is a much bigger component for France, while Britain is a bigger contributor to international aviation emissions.

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The city’s largest-ever climate march was taking place while across town a group of gilets jaunes – the protest group known for their hi-vis vests – were engaging in some of the worst violence of their entire three month revolt against declining wages, rising inequality and other consequences of globalisation.

The division between those demanding social justice and climate justice fits neatly with a widely-held view of the gilets jaunes as opposed to climate action. The initial protests were sparked by a rise in diesel tax, which would have cut pollution but landed the cost on drivers. This was too much for those living in poor neighbourhoods, isolated by cuts to public transport.

The narrative that this amounts to a popular rejection of efforts to fight global warming, has been co-opted internationally, most prominently by US president Donald Trump.

But amid the well-heeled climate marchers was a significant scattering of the distinctive vests. In the Place de la République, François Boulot walked out to address the crowd wearing his yellow gilet.

“The social and ecological emergencies are inseparable: the fight against the end of the world and the end of the month are the same. We will not be able to operate the ecological transition without an equitable wealth redistribution,” said Boulot, who has been a prominent figure in the gilets jaunes. “How can you impose another tax on people already rummaging the bins to feed themselves?”

Rather than recoiling from climate action in the face of the gilets jaunes, France is reckoning with what fair climate policy looks like and how it is decided.

Two gilets jaunes protestors at a climate march in Paris on Saturday 16 March. On the left, the jacket reads: “End of the world, end of the month: same perpetrators same fight” (Photo: Natalie Sauer)

President Emmanuel Macron, the unifying object of ire for his top-down style of governing, has attempted to defuse the protests, first by dropping the tax, then, when that had no effect by convening a national ‘grand debate’ on four controversial issues: one of them the ecological transition. The series of town hall events ended on Friday.

Meanwhile, for 18 consecutive Saturdays, the gilets jaunes have occupied over 30,000 roundabouts across the country, erecting makeshift sheds in which political opinions are traded back and forth.

A week before the climate march, at one of those ephemeral agora on the Champs-Élysées, Jerôme Rodriguez watches as police wheel water cannons into the square. Two powerful jets gush on to a small crowd under the Arc de Triomphe.

“Come on jackets! Time to go home now,” Rodriguez grins, a pair of sunglasses masking the eye he lost in the protests.

For this self-styled figurehead of the gilets, the climate issue is “not the priority”. Protestors are focused on full fridges and “dignified life”, he says.

“Eventually, when we obtain the first things, ecology will have its place, because kids talk a lot about it, and we have been told about it our whole lives. But nowadays, people aren’t concentrated on this. It’s a shame, of course. But we need to get them to live well so that we can interest them in the project,” Rodriguez says.

Macron suspends fuel tax hike in face of ‘worst protests since 1968’

This is not entirely supported by data. The French Institute of National Opinion (IFOP) found 85% of lower professional categories (employees and workers) and 83% of the non-working population are worried about global warming. Young people are marginally more concerned about the issue, according to a different survey.

A group of women walk by wearing badges demanding climate justice. Meanwhile, Rodriguez, whose celebrity within the movement is obvious, is surrounded by a cluster of pensioners, an elderly woman in a motor wheelchair festooned with bags and a man wearing a farmer’s cap. The average age of the gilets jaunes is 45, according to recent analysis, and they are predominantly working to lower middle class and lean to the political left. For more than half of the participants, the movement represents their first political action.

If there is one thing that unites the gilets jaunes, it is the sense that responsibility for change lies with those at the top of society and government: “Plus de banquise, moins de banquiers” (More ice sheets, less bankers) is one of the many slogans associated with the movement. Macron, a former banker who has fashioned an image abroad as a defender of the Paris climate deal with his catchphrase ‘make our planet great again’, is a symbol of wasteful, hypocritical consumption at home.

“Ask Macron when he travels by plane, plus all of the cars that follow him,” Rodriguez says. “And that guy tells us: ‘Be careful'”.

“Not to mention his tableware, his bread and all of that!” another protestor Sylvain yells.

“And his carpet!” another calls out. (Macron and his wife Brigitte reportedly spent tens of thousands of euros on cutlery at the Élysée Palace and €300,000 on a new carpet.)

Jerôme Rodriguez holds a sprig of mimosa on the Champs Élysées (Photo: Natalie Sauer)

Marie-Claire, a pensioner who did not wish to give her family name, says: “You know, people who live precariously, they’ve made ecological efforts before the capitalists. Because they’ve already made efforts not to consume electricity. Not to consume too much water. You know, there are people who do not iron their clothes, because it costs too much electricity. I’ve known that, and my daughter does not iron her laundry. Children take a five minute shower. We were ecologists well before anyone else.”

“The real polluters, who are they?” Akli, also a pensioner, bounces back. “We forbid old cars. But we leave Ubers and big Lamborghini to circulate. The jet setters, the cargo ships, we allow them to burn heavy petrol. No one comes to ask them to burn anything else but fossil fuels.”

Under fire, France’s ‘King Macron’ surveys nation on climate policy

One manifesto has been widely circulated by the gilets jaunes, calling for among other things, increased building insulation and an aviation fuel tax. But the movement has yet to adopt a coherent programme or set of goals.

Because of this any snapshot of the gilets jaunes is bound to fail to grasp the full picture. Other prominent figures are building bridges with environmentalists. Priscillia Ludovsky, whose petition opposing fuel price hikes attracted more than one million signatures and catalysed the movement, has joined with Cyril Dion, a figurehead of the environmental movement, to urge Macron to meet a series of demands, such as a reduced VAT on organic produce and heftier taxes on polluting companies.

Mostly, the gilets jaunes shunned Macron’s Grand Debat, meaning that the two conversations, one encouraging a dialogue with established institutions and the other rejecting the president’s authority, have mostly run in parallel. Occasionally they have crossed over, with some gilets jaunes participating in the state’s fora.

Rodriguez says Macron’s forum is “just about getting more information so that he can sell us his electoral programme – which we don’t want. We can organise very well by ourselves, we can carry out debates. See, we’re debating today.”

The sense that the state is not listening has led to calls for a citizen’s referendum initiative (RIC), under which citizens would take an active role in the formulation of laws. This would, advocates say, ensure that the interests of the people are represented even as the climate crisis is addressed.

“The gilets jaunes, whether you like it or not, have succeeded where 30 years of social battles have failed: putting the question of social justice at the centre of the debate,” philosopher Pierre Dardot and sociologist Christian Laval, wrote in December: “Better, they have posed a fundamental question for humanity about the link between social justice and ecological justice.”

Far from the protests pouring cold water on the issue, suddenly, it seems all of France is talking about climate change.

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“Reconnecting with the thread of progress also means taking the lead in the ecological fight. Will we be able to look our children in the eye if we do not also reduce our climate debt?” Macron wrote in an op-ed on the renewal of Europe published on Tuesday in outlets across 28 EU states, “The European Union must set its ambition and adapt its policies accordingly with such measures as a European Climate Bank to finance the ecological transition”

The call, a spokesperson for the French government confirmed to Climate Home News, was inspired by the proposal for a European bank for climate and biodiversity championed by French economist Pierre Larrouturou and top climate scientist Jean Jouzel.

Part of a wider set of measures dubbed the climate-finance pact, the European bank for climate and biodiversity as conceived by Larrouturou and Jouzel would take the form a green subsidiary of the European Investment Bank (EIB). It would provide 0%-interest loans for climate projects to each EU member state worth up to 2% of their GDP.

Speaking at a conference in Rennes on Tuesday night, Jouzel said that he was “quite pleased Emmanuel Macron would take up the initiative”.

Macron however steered clear of explicitly backing Larrotouru and Jouzel’s climate-finance pact, or providing details on how the bank would work. Such vagueness, the spokesperson for the government said, was intended to allow candidates during the European elections to appropriate the project for themselves, rather than lock them into a pre-defined framework.

French experts propose trillion-euro EU climate finance pact

More than 600 political figures have backed Larrouturou and Jouzel’s climate-finance pact, with Spanish president Pedro Sanchez and the pope ranking among its most influential supporters.

On 2 March, environment minister François de Rugy confirmed he had met Jouzel to discuss the project and had raised it with Macron.

De Rugy called the initiative an “excellent idea”.

“I believe that the real idea is to have a European tool that will not weigh on the budgets of European states and that will be like the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, created when we opened ourselves up to the former countries of Eastern Europe,” he said

New UK green watchdog to be based on EU system, says Gove

But the initiative has left the current European Investment Bank (EIB) puzzled. A spokesperson said Europe already had a climate bank: the EIB. Such a reorganisation was unnecessary, what was needed was greater investment from member states.

Writing on 11 January in the business daily Les Echos, vice-president of the EIB Ambroise Fayolle said: “The EIB addressed at least 25% of its investments into the fight against climate change. Despite the efforts of the European Commission and the EIB, financial means remain insufficient by comparison to the size of the needs. So in the end we all agree! Yes, Europe must invest. But let’s try to use what already exists and has worked for the past 60 years – the European Investment Bank – even if that means using it more and better.”

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Macron’s ‘great national debate’ offers French people the opportunity to participate in local consultations and surveys from 15 January until 15 March.

On top of the ecological transition, three broad themes are under discussion: taxes and public spending; democracy and citizenship and the organisation of the state and public services.

Protestors Climate Home News spoke to were sceptical about the initiative. Twenty-seven-year-old Dylan Malla, from Vannes in Brittany, said the town’s mayor had asked him to help organise a local debate.

“Honestly, I’m going to do it, because they are giving us the opportunity to speak and it’s not right to go on the street, just to hear them accuse us of not having accepted their offer,” said Malla, who has been jobless since July.

“It is more in the name of trust that I am participating in this debate. But I don’t believe in it for a second. The government is misleading us to buy time… For me, I will still be on the street on Saturday, debate or not!

The gilets jaunes protests erupted following a (now aborted) tax hike on diesel fuel, which has come to symbolise a broadly-held view of Macron’s governing style as arrogant, top-down and loading social costs on to the poor and middle class. On Saturday the movement will hold its tenth nationwide day of protest in two months.

Accompanying the survey, Macron sent a letter clarifying that the initiative was not a referendum and restating positions he has held since his election.

“Hot air, hot air, hot air! What is the purpose of organising a debate if King Macron tells us immediately that he won’t change direction?” said Brigitte, a member of a gilets jaunes Facebook group in Rennes, Brittany.

Altogether, the survey on the ecological transition puts forward 17 questions on perceptions of climate change, carbon taxes, individual responsibility and awareness of current policies.

Valérie Masson-Delmotte, a French climate scientist and co-chair of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), criticised the first question, which asked respondents to pick the “most important, concrete problem in the area of the environment,” from “air pollution”, “coastal degradation”, “climate change (sea level rise, drought)”, “biodiversity and the disappearance of certain species” or other.

“The first question asks to identify a single priority on subjects that seem to me to be of equal importance. Why?,” Masson-Delmotte tweeted.

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In an interview with environmental publication Reporterre, environment minister Francois de Rugy defended the national grand debate.

“This great debate is a good opportunity to exchange with French people who want not only ecology, but democracy,” he said.

De Rugy expressed a willingness to lobby the European community for the introduction of a tax on aviation fuel – one of the demands of the movement.

“When it comes to the aviation sector,” De Rugy said, “I am in favour of revising the Chicago Convention at an international level. It was adopted in 1944, at a time when no one was talking about climate change. The tax on [aviation] kerosene may be one of the subjects of the upcoming European elections. Taxation must be done on a European scale because if it is only done on a French scale, there will be leakage.”

The environment minister also said that heavy vehicles ought also to be taxed, “especially those that only cross France”. He pledged to work with transport minister Elisabeth Borne so that all “transport that emit CO2 [could] contribute”.

De Rugy also said that taxation was only one method for bringing down carbon emissions and the government wanted to experiment with incentive methods, for example for saving energy.

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Valérie Masson-Delmotte, a French climate scientist and co-chair of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), told Climate Home News’ podcast CopCast that members of the senate committee of sustainable development had been “surprised” by findings in a major report in October, which said green policies must be coupled with public consultation or face social resistance.

“They expressed how difficult it is for them as members of the senate to think on how to implement transitions. They also said they were powerless. They didn’t know how to change things, basically,” said Masson-Delmotte.

Listen to the full interview – CopCast Episode 6: The Yellow Vest Warning

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France has been gripped by rioting for three weeks, after Emmanuel Macron’s government announced a tax on diesel fuels designed to reduce pollution.

Despite a retraction of the policy this week, large demonstrations are expected in the French capital over the weekend. On Saturday morning, police arrested hundreds of protestors from the gilets jaunes (yellow vests) movement in Paris.

Masson-Delmotte, who spoke to CHN’s podcast at UN climate talks in Poland, said she had met protesters near her home in Paris.

“It was interesting to understand how much they don’t trust policy makers, how they don’t trust experts,” she said. “What is striking is the inability of the usual democratic representatives, elected people, trade unions – the usual instruments of a democracy – to deal with the situation. There is a lack of dialogue and a lack of perception of representation of a fraction of the population which believes they are trapped when the price of oil goes up and they believe they have no alternative.”

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The IPCC’s special report in October found social barriers to change could be overcome through strong, consultative leadership, “including citizens and allowing for participation for minorities, and having them provide input and endorse it”.

Masson-Delmotte called for the creation of citizens’ assemblies, borrowing a model created in Ireland, in order for the political class to better understand social anxieties and needs.

The protests in France coincide with UN climate talks in Katowice. The Polish host government has used the talks to highlight the impact on workers and other groups affected by the closure of mines or other measures necessary to avoid dangerous climate change.

“It’s … tragic to observe when I live and work in France and I see that our country failed to have a sustainable development approach that pays attention to the ones who are most vulnerable to policies,” said Masson-Delmotte. “I think our senators reflect society and maybe the older generation of society, so they have not yet fully understood the implications of climate change and how deep it goes into thinking differently the way we build a new future.”

France’s standing committee on sustainable development did not respond to a request for comment.

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The tax, which was set to raise the price of diesel by 6.5 cents a litre, was originally part of a wider package of financial measures set to come into force on 1 January.

But that has not appeased the movement. One of its spokespeople, Benjamin Cauchy, told AFP: “French people are not after crumbs, they want the whole baguette.”

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Instead, Cauchy called for “a new wealth redistribution in France” and the implementation of “regular referenda on society’s greatest issues”. Representatives of the movement also declined to meet the government on Tuesday morning.

Initially inspired by the hike on diesel tax, the Gilets Jaunes have since grown into an all-out national protest against rising living costs and social inequality. Commentators, who are struggling to make sense of it as it moves fast and outstrips traditional political affiliations, have labelled it France’s worst period of unrest since May 1968.

Beginning on the 17 November, 113,000 people demonstrated across France against the hike on fuel in the first week, 53,000 in the second, and 36,000 in the third. On Saturday 1 December, the protests have left three dead, over 260 injured, and led to 400 arrests.

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The government is treating it as a crisis. Prime minister Edouard Phillipe, who was due to open the annual UN climate summit on Monday, cancelled his visit as he met with the rest of the cabinet for an emergency meeting.

Macron initially framed the tax hike as a ecological initiative against dirty fuel and air pollution. Politicians and commentators have however questioned the motivations of the president.

“The government has explained that they were taxing taxes for ecological reasons,” Ségolène Royal, who served as environment minister under social democrat president François Hollande, told Radio Classique. “This is a lie. This would make sense if people could pollute less by changing their car.” This was not the case, she said, because the government was not simultaneously supporting people to buy electric cars. A €10,000 euro bonus to help motorists buy electric cars has been reduced to €6,000 euros under Macron.

In an attempt to shake off impressions that the Gilets Jaunes are anti-green, the movement has come out with its own ecological demands. Organisers urged the government to “favour ecology while saving households money” by carrying out a national plan to insulate buildings. Among other demands were an end to tax perks on aircraft fuel and the construction of shopping malls in the suburbs to discourage car use.

Five years ago, France’s attempt to impose a green tax on road freight was sunk in the face of country-wide protests. Brittany, in particular, launched the red caps movement, spreading chaos by occupying roads and bridges.

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Speaking to national radio station Europe 1, Emmanuel Macron said the rise stood “in line with what the previous majority voted and wanted. In other words: to tax fossil fuels more [and] whatever produces emissions. This is how we will reinvest in renewable energies.”

He added: “I would rather tax fuel than tax work. Those who grumble over fuel price hikes also demand that we fight against air pollution because their children suffer from illnesses.”

Rising by 6.5 cents a litre, the diesel tax change is part of a wider package of financial measures set to come into force on 1 January 2019. Its aim is to combat air pollution by ending incentives to burn dirty diesel.

But the pill is hard to swallow for the country’s poorer car-dependent households, who are already grappling with a fuel price rise resulting from global market fluctuations. At the time of writing a barrel of Brent crude oil costs $72, up from $60 a year ago.

The price of diesel has jumped 20.6% in the last year, data compiled by Carbu.com shows. It accounts for 78.5% of road transport fuel in France, according to the French Union of Petroleum Industries.

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French drivers are planning a blockade to protest price rises on 17 November.

Five years ago, France’s attempt to impose a green tax on road freight was sunk in the face of country-wide protests. Brittany, in particular, launched the red caps movement, spreading chaos by occupying roads and bridges.

This time, the uniform of protest is a yellow vest. “This yellow vest will be the red cap of rural and provincial drivers, who have been held hostage by this fiscal extortion with pseudo-ecological airs,” one of the organisers tweeted.

Asked whether the measure amounted to “punitive ecology”, Macron said: “This is ecology and we need to do it.”

Green campaigners, while supportive of raising fossil fuel taxes in principle, have criticised the government for failing to ringfence the revenues for clean energy.

The treasury is using drivers to plug a hole in the budget from falling wealth tax, argued Yannick Jadot, from the party Europe Ecology – The Greens, on Radio France last month. “I ask the government to give that $13 billion back to transportation, mobility and motorists,” he said.

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Hulot, a former broadcaster known in France for his wildlife and conservation documentaries, told France Inter that he had taken the decision to quit the government, saying he had felt alone in pushing for more ambitious climate policies and an energy transition to take place in France.

“I don’t want to lie to myself any more. I don’t want to give the illusion that my presence in the French government shows that we are doing what it takes to face these challenges. I have taken the decision to leave the government,” he said.

“This is about being sincere with myself,” he said.

Hulot said he had not told president Emmanuel Macron or prime minister Edouard Philippe about his intention to resign, which also came as a surprise to the two journalists interviewing him on the morning news programme.

Hulot was made environment minister for the first time in May 2017 after deciding not to run as a presidential candidate a year earlier.

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As part of Macron’s government, he was forced to accept the implementation of the EU-Canada free trade agreement and a delay in reducing the share of nuclear power in France’s energy mix to 50% by 2025 – decisions to which he publicly objected. Rumours of Hulot’s imminent resignation were common during his time in office.

Describing his “immense friendship” with Macron’s government, Hulot said that although he had no regrets in joining the government he had suffered from his time in office, increasingly accommodating himself with “small steps” at a time when “the planet is becoming a sauna and deserves that we change the way we think and operate”.

“Am I up to the task? Who would be up to this task on their own? Where are my troops ? Who is behind me?”, he asked.

Hulot admitted he had been thinking about resigning throughout the summer but that it was the presence of hunting lobbyist Thierry Coste at a ministerial meeting to which he was not invited that prompted him to take the decision.

“We have to talk about this because it’s a democratic issue to ask who holds the power and who governs in this country,” he told France Inter.

Hulot said his time in office had been “an accumulation of disappointments”, citing France’s failure to move away from nuclear power. He said he felt like he had “a bit of influence but no power”.

He stressed that the transition to a carbon-free world was a “collective responsibility” and that the dominating liberalism model had to be put into question if the world was to move to a green economy.

“I hope that my resignation will lead to a profound introspection of our society on the reality of the world,” he said, pleading all sides not to use his resignation as political tool.

Benjamin Griveaux, spokesman for the French government told French TV channel BFM TV he regretted the way Hulot has chosen to make his decision public, adding: “I think it would have been basic courtesy to warn the president and the prime minister.”

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Opposition politicians were also quick to respond to the announcement.

The leader of the opposition les Republicans party Laurent Wauquiez, told RTL radio that he understood that Hulot felt he had been “betrayed” by Macron.

“I don’t necessarily share his opinions, but I can understand that he feels betrayed — like many French people — by the fact strong promises were made but the impression that these promises have not been kept.”

Ségolène Royal, former environment minister under the previous socialist government during which the Paris Agreement was signed, wrote on twitter: “I respect Nicolas Hulot’s choice. As I know from experience, he has proved that the battles for the environment are very difficult but so crucial.”

“France needs to keep the climate leadership and be ready to fight for those forces around the planet that hope for a better future.”

Yannick Jadot, from the French Green party, said: “The departure of Nicolas Hulot from the government is the consequence of the absence of environmental policies from this government.”

Je respecte le choix de Nicolas Hulot. Il prouve que les batailles pour l’Environnement, je le sais d’expérience, sont très difficiles mais tellement cruciales. La France doit garder le leadership climatique et être au combat avec les forces vives de la planète qui espèrent

— Ségolène Royal (@RoyalSegolene) August 28, 2018

In a further blow to European climate ambitions on Sunday, German chancellor Angela Merkel poured cold water on calls by EU climate commissioner Miguel Arias Cañete for the bloc to raise its 2030 climate targets.

According to the Reuters news agency, Merkel said “I’m not particularly happy about these new proposals. I think we should first stick to the goals we have already set ourselves. I don’t think permanently setting ourselves new goals makes any sense.”

Germany will not meet ambitious targets it set for itself to meet by 2020. Last month, Merkel said Germany’s existing 2030 target would be “very, very challenging” to meet.

This article was first published on DeSmog UK. Additional reporting by Karl Mathiesen.

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Emerging economies will get the assistance in the form of loans and donations, over and above the 300 million euros ($369m) France had already committed in 2015, AFP reported.

Speaking at the founding conference of the International Solar Alliance in New Delhi, Macron took an indirect jibe at the United States for leaving the United Nations climate change deal.

“Our solar mamas did not wait for us,” he said, referring to a group of women solar engineers. “They started to act and deliver complete results. They did not wait and stop because some countries just decided to leave the floor and leave the Paris agreement.”

US President Donald Trump had in 2017 decided that his country was withdrawing from the Paris climate agreement, signed by 195 countries in December 2015.

India and France are co-hosting the first International Solar Alliance summit in New Delhi. Heads of state of 23 nations were present at the event.

The International Solar Alliance is a treaty based inter-governmental alliance of 121 sunshine-rich countries that lie fully or partially between the Tropics of Cancer and Capricorn. Their adoption of solar energy is expected to help reduce the use of fossil fuels and combat climate change. Sixty countries have signed the agreement to join the alliance. Macron said member countries made up three-fourths of the world population, PTI reported.

At the event, Prime Minister Narendra Modi suggested reading the Vedas to find ways to control climate change. “The Vedas consider the sun as the soul of the world, it has been considered as a life nurturer,” he said. “Today, for combating climate change, we need to look at this ancient idea to find a way.”

Modi also proposed a 10-point action plan to make affordable solar energy technology available to all nations.

This article was produced by Scroll.in

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The French president prefaced his speech to the World Economic Forum by commenting on the irony of holding a summit on globalisation in the inaccessible ski resort, which has been snow-bound much of the week.

“With this snow, it could be hard to believe in global warming,” Macron joked. “Fortunately, we did not invite anybody sceptical this year.”

In fact, US president Trump is due to address the forum on Friday – and he has repeatedly cast doubt on the scientific consensus that human activity is driving climate change.

Only last month, Trump tweeted about cold weather in the US as justification for his decision to withdraw from the Paris Agreement.

In the East, it could be the COLDEST New Year’s Eve on record. Perhaps we could use a little bit of that good old Global Warming that our Country, but not other countries, was going to pay TRILLIONS OF DOLLARS to protect against. Bundle up!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 29, 2017

Jokes aside, Macron described action on climate change as one of five “pillars” of his domestic agenda, arguing a clean transition was good for the economy.

“We have decided to make France a model in the fight against climate change,” he said. “That is, for me, a huge advantage in terms of attractiveness and competitiveness… you can create a lot of jobs in such a strategy.”

Policy measures include closing France’s remaining coal power plants by 2021 and supporting clean technology research.

One of Macron’s first acts as president was to launch an international competition for grants to pursue climate science projects in France. Out of 18 winners, 13 came from the US.

On the second anniversary of the Paris Agreement, he hosted a green finance summit. While visiting China this month, he charmed the public by learning to say his slogan “make our planet great again” in Mandarin.

France has some ground to make up after missing its 2016 emissions target by 3.6%. Ecology minister Nicolas Hulot is set to reveal policies in housing, transport and forestry at the end of the month, to bring the country’s performance in line with the goals of the Paris Agreement.

In her speech to the forum earlier in the day, German chancellor Angela Merkel made only passing mention of climate change, describing it as “a great danger”. Instead, she focused on the importance of multilateralism to address migration, disruptive technology and populist unrest.

Merkel has come under criticism at home and abroad for appearing to give up on meeting the country’s 2020 carbon-cutting goal. Her party is in talks to form a governing coalition with the Social Democrats, who are cautious about low carbon reforms due to their ties with mining and industrial trade unions.

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A short video Macron posted on social media went viral among Chinese internet users, who were impressed with the French president’s efforts to learn a phrase in their language.

Macron forged the slogan – an echo of US president Donald Trump’s “make America great again” – last year to show his continued support for the Paris Agreement in the face of Trump’s decision to withdraw the US.

Parce que le climat parle à tout le monde : “Make our planet great again” … en chinois. pic.twitter.com/C6UTeP16Nr

— Emmanuel Macron (@EmmanuelMacron) January 8, 2018

Observers hoping for new climate change initiatives were disappointed by a joint statement from Macron and his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping, however.

Climate activists have pinned high hopes on the two leaders to renew political momentum for the international climate treaty that aims to limit global temperature rise within 2C, despite the White House.

Report: Macron summit touts green finance progress – despite Trump

Yet in their joint statement, released by Xinhua News Agency on Wednesday, Macron and Xi focused on what was already agreed.

The two reassured each other they would “deepen cooperation” on environment and climate change, and applauded each other’s recent achievements: the Paris One Planet Summit hosted by France and soft launch of a national emissions trading scheme in China.

Both sides expressed satisfaction with progress that had been made on green financing since China hosted the G20 summit in Hangzhou in 2016, according to the statement.

And they promised to work together with other countries to intensify pre-2020 climate action, which was one of the more contentious issues at last month’s UN climate talks in Bonn.

As a demonstration of the two countries’ commitment to multilateralism, Xi and Macron said they will “keep constructive dialogues on international treaties”, including biodiversity, nature conservation and protecting marine life.

They announced a “China-France Year of Environment” to deepen cooperation.

Li Shuo, a senior climate campaigner with Greenpeace, said the dialogue “strikes the right tone for this critical year of climate action, when over 190 nations are expected to work out detailed rules to implement Paris Agreement.

“Going forward, a Sino-France alliance is critical in effectively implementing the Paris Agreement and strengthening global climate ambition.”

Among a string of business deals with China Macron secured during his visits, cooperation deals on nuclear and aviation were framed as means to tackle climate change by some Chinese observers.

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Shifting finance flows from dirty energy to clean was a major theme, with moves from the World Bank and investor networks responsible for $26 trillion of assets worldwide.

More than 60 heads of state showed up, forming coalitions to drive action in various sectors. These included phasing out coal, cutting emissions from shipping and building back stronger from Caribbean hurricanes.

Macron reminded delegates that two years after countries adopted the Paris climate agreement, the world was on course for more than 3C of warming. That exceeds the goal of holding temperature rise “well below 2C” and is projected to wipe some small island states off the map.

Donald Trump’s plan to pull the US out “weakened” the agreement, he admitted. “What we have to do in the coming hours is very tangibly, each one of us, explain the firm commitments we’re making to change what seems to be an unavoidable destiny…

“We are here not for words but for deeds because we are facing an ongoing emergency.”

Report: Trump seeks pro-coal alliance as global push against fuel grows

UN chief Antonio Guterres emphasised the importance of getting money flowing towards climate-friendly infrastructure, saying: “Finance is the difference between winning and losing the war.”

The World Bank’s Jim Kim credited Macron for motivating one of the biggest reveals of the summit: a pledge to stop financing oil and gas drilling projects from 2019 (with a caveat for “exceptional circumstances”).

That showed “true leadership”, said Shelagh Whitley, climate and energy expert at the Overseas Development Institute. “There is now global consensus that energy access for the poor is best provided through clean energy and that shared prosperity can only be assured through ambitious action on climate change.”

In the private sector, 225 investors launched Climate Action 100+, a campaign to bring the world’s 100 biggest corporate climate polluters in line with the Paris goals.

The announcement followed a day after Exxon Mobil bowed to shareholder pressure and agreed to publish analysis of how its oil and gas assets will fare in a 2C world.

Carbon neutrality: 14 countries including Germany, Ethiopia and Costa Rica promised to develop plans to slash or offset their emissions entirely by 2050

Coal: an alliance led by the UK and Canada to phase out coal announced new members including Sweden, California and EDF, taking the total to 26 countries, 8 sub-national governments and 24 companies

Shipping: 36 countries including Australia, Greece and the Marshall Islands (which has the world’s second largest flag registry) called on the International Maritime Organization to curb shipping emissions in line with the Paris agreement

Resilience: Caribbean leaders, in partnership with development banks, revealed an $8bn investment plan for the region to build back stronger from hurricanes

Carbon pricing: Twelve countries and regions of the Americas including Colombia, Costa Rica and Chile pledged to put a price on carbon and develop ties between their emission trading schemes

The “One Planet Summit” was a major political project for Macron, defending the Paris agreement’s legacy from Trump. It got a mixed reception.

Climate policy veteran Paul Bledsoe, who served in Bill Clinton’s White House, praised Macron’s attention to the climate science and willingness to keep the issue high on the international agenda.

“I really think that Macron recognises that climate protection is the single most important economic and security issue today. He has the opportunity to inspire a new generation of leaders,” Bledsoe told Climate Home News.

Critics found the barrage of speeches left little room for dialogue – or developing country priorities.

“This summit is very important as a signal of progression of the Paris Agreement,” said Congolese climate negotiator Tosi Mpanu Mpanu, “but it is a little bit too scripted, it is a little bit too antiseptic.”

In the run-up to the event, poorer countries hoped for new money to support their struggle with the impacts of climate change.

The UK brought £140m ($186m) to fight illegal logging of tropical forests and boost resilience to climate-related disasters. The EU said €9bn ($11bn) of its “external investment plan” for Africa and neighbouring countries was targeted at sustainable projects.

But nobody volunteered to plug the $2bn gap in the Green Climate Fund left by Trump axing the US contribution. And there was little visibility of the path to the $100bn of annual climate finance the developed world has promised to mobilise by 2020.

Mpanu Mpanu told Climate Home News many projects that vulnerable communities needed were simply not attractive to the private sector. “We know that public finance will not be sufficient and it needs to be used to leverage where the real money is,” he said. “But for some of us developing countries, where we don’t have a strong business environment for private investment, having clarity on levels of public finance is what gives us comfort.”

This article has been corrected. A previous version mistakenly said the UK had brought £140 billion, instead of million

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The intervention puts shipping emissions on the agenda for some fifty heads of state expected to attend president Emmanuel Macron’s anniversary meeting for the Paris climate agreement.

It will shine a spotlight on negotiations at the International Maritime Organization (IMO), which are due to produce an initial climate strategy for shipping in April 2018.

A copy of the statement obtained by Climate Home News calls on the sector to do its bit to hold global warming “well below 2C” and aim for 1.5C.

“International shipping, like all other sectors of human activity, must take urgent action in consideration of these vital objectives for the future of the planet and of humanity,” it says.

That means peaking emissions “in the short term” and reaching carbon neutrality “towards the second half of this century”. The language is significantly stronger than the “aspirational” targets proposed by industry groups.

The IMO’s initial strategy should include policies with “immediate effect” – a category that may include speed limits at sea – as well as developing longer term measures, the statement says.

Report: UN shipping climate talks ‘captured’ by industry lobbyists

The document has been sent to French embassies around the world for promotion, according to a source familiar with the initiative. A number of countries are expected to sign up in Paris, with the diplomatic push continuing up until the April IMO meeting. It is not clear whether Macron will personally endorse it.

The “Paris Declaration” is subtitled the “Tony de Brum declaration”, in homage to the recently deceased Marshall Islands statesman who challenged his country’s flag registry to take a lead on the matter.

Marshall Islands president Hilda Heine has taken up his campaign, claiming the world’s second largest registry is on her side. On the sidelines of UN climate talks in Bonn last month, she said “disappointingly little progress” had been made at the IMO, adding: “Ambitious climate action and sustainable growth of the shipping sector are both possible. And both are essential.”

Talks at the IMO to date have been tense, with a handful of European and island states calling for high ambition, while major emerging economies raise concerns about the cost. The likes of Brazil have argued rich and poor countries have different responsibilities when it comes to addressing climate change – including in the shipping sector.

The declaration implicitly rejects that argument, saying the strategy should “equally apply to all ships regardless of their flag”. It adds, though, that “disproportionate impacts” on small island states and the poorest countries should be addressed.

There are also strong industry voices to contend with. Research by lobbying watchdog Influence Map has shown they have a significant presence in national delegations to the IMO as well as observer bodies.

The influential International Chamber of Shipping opposes a binding cap on emissions, on the basis it could inhibit world trade and development. It has argued emission reduction policies should wait until the IMO has gathered ship-level data on fuel use, delaying action until 2023.

Shipping executive: ‘We have deliberately misled public on climate’

Laurence Tubiana, a key architect of the Paris Agreement who now leads the European Climate Foundation, cited shipping as a priority issue for Macron’s summit.

In response to a question at a phone briefing for reporters about the political outcomes expected in Paris, she said: “This summit will be an opportunity for the senior ministers and heads of state present, to turn the political high ambition that helped deliver the Paris Agreement, into economic reality.

“It is a coalition of the willing on climate action. An opportunity not just to make announcements, but also to build alliances of like-minded countries across a number of areas, from moving away from coal to financing mitigation and adaptation, charting the way to carbon neutrality by 2050 and reducing emissions from shipping.”

A spokesperson for the IMO said countries were encouraged to raise the position expressed in the declaration at UN shipping talks, “the right and proper place” for such discussions.

IMO chief Kitack Lim told delegates at its annual assembly on 27 November “the whole world will be watching” in April when they set out a climate strategy.

“I urge you, be bold; set ambitious goals that really will make a difference,” he said. “You have a real opportunity here to do something of lasting significance. Make the most of it.”

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In an address to a conference charged with writing the rules of the deal struck in Paris in 2015, Macron promised to replace the $2 million annual donation withdrawn by the US from the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

The president also called for a border tax to protect EU industry against parties that do not share its climate goals, and promised efforts to haul EU carbon prices up to €30 per tonne.

His speech followed a cautious address by the summit’s co-host, the German chancellor, Angela Merkel, which Green MPs involved in coalition talks said cast new doubts on the prospect of a governmental pact.

Macron by contrast was bold. On the IPCC, he said: “We need scientific information which is constantly nourished to ensure clear decision making. The IPCC is one of the major components of this work.”

“However, it is threatened today by the decision of the US not to guarantee funding for it. Therefore, I propose that the EU replaces the USA, and France will meet that challenge.”

While France hoped that other EU countries would also contribute, “I can guarantee that starting in 2018, the IPCC will have all the money it needs and will continue to support our decision-making. It will not miss a single euro,” Macron said.

IPCC: Canada doubles contribution to UN climate science panel

On carbon markets, Macron said that France would be “working hard” to achieve a €30 per tonne carbon fee, “the price that will make it possible to change the behaviour of investors in industrial circles”.

He added: “In particular, we need a border tax to make it possible to protect industry sectors, as there are imports from countries not respecting these goals.”

Merkel, once dubbed the ‘climate chancellor’ – but also a stalwart defender of Germany’s car industry and power utilities – acknowledged that her country had “a long way yet to go” to meet its target of cutting emissions 40% by 2020.

But while it was “important to fulfil obligations we entered into”, she said, “social issues come to fore when we talk about coal. We have to think: is such a scheme economically viable and affordable? Even in a rich country like Germany, there are important conflicts in society that need to be solved and settled in a reliable, calm and collected manner.”

Around 40% of Germany’s energy comes from coal – much of it heavily polluting brown lignite, which is pushing Germany to overshoot its 2020 emissions target by some 120 million tonnes, according to estimates.

The action needed on coal was something “we have to discuss in precise terms in the days to come,” Merkel said, in a nod to the ongoing coalition talks due to end on Friday.

Merkel coalition negotiator: German coal mining could end in the 2030s

Annalena Barbock, an MP in the German Green Party’s negotiating team told Climate Home that Merkel’s speech would not help to unblock coalition talks that were currently “stuck” over the twin issues of climate goals and reduction in coal use.

“I don’t know if this was Merkel playing hardball or not but it was a true disappointment for me as a Green negotiator,” she said. “It was also a true disappointment for me as a climate politician and as a human being. She said at the beginning of her speech that climate change was a challenge to the destiny of humankind. If this is the answer, then we have to be very worried.”

The US coal industry at least might take some heart from Merkel’s apparent reluctance to speed up the German coal phase out, albeit in terms that might not please Germany’s 20,000 coal miners.

Speaking to Climate Home last week, Barry Worthington, director of the US Energy Association, said: “Germany doesn’t like to talk about it, but it is burning US coal for power consumption. Everyone wants to talk about renewables deployment but since World War II, its been buying and burning US coal and it continues to do so.”

Earlier in the conference plenary, the UN secertary-general Antonio Guterres had warned that the window for limiting global warming to 2C would close within five years.

With an estimated $825bn invested globally in fossil fuels and other high-emissions sectors last year, he said: “We must stop placing bets on an unsustainable future that will place savings and societies at risk,” he said. “Markets need to be reoriented away from the counter-productive and the short term.”

“The world should adopt a single rule,” he added. “If big infrastructure projects are not green, they should not be given the green light”

A high carbon price in market covering at least 50% of the world’s economy would be needed to meet the Paris targets, the UN chief said.

“I urge G20 countries to set a strong example,” he concluded.

Climate Home News’ reporting at Cop23 is supported in part by the European Climate Foundation.

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As the US under Donald Trump reneges on its climate commitments, Macron will speak at the UN on 19 September, pitching to unite the rest of the world behind a binding green charter.

Yann Aguila, leader of the 30-strong team who produced a draft pact in June, said France was seeking UN support to set up a working group. That would eventually result in a document to be agreed by the UN general assembly or another international body, and ratified by member states.

“The stars are aligned,” he told Climate Home in response to written questions. “France has gained a position of leadership in environmental issues, and the decision of the United States to withdraw from the Paris Agreement has not had the disastrous effect that one could have expected. On the contrary, many states have decided to go beyond their initial commitments and to reinforce their action. Now more than ever, we can hope for the Global Pact for the Environment to become a reality.”

The 8-page proposal could give teeth to existing “soft law”, the authors suggest, listing principles, such as the right to an ecologically sound environment, that already find expression in other environmental agreements.

It is championed by Laurent Fabius, who presided over the critical 2015 Paris climate summit. As foreign minister in the lead up to the talks, he mobilised France’s extensive diplomatic network to lay the foundations for an international agreement.

California’s former “governator” Arnold Schwarzenegger lent some star power to the launch, grabbing the headlines by joining Macron in a plea to “make our planet great again”.

Report: Emmanuel Macron vows climate action as French president

But critics warn the legalities are much more complicated than the pact’s backers make out.

Susan Biniaz, until recently top lawyer at the US state department, set out 11 pages of questions about the pact, in a paper for Columbia Law School. Now a lecturer and senior fellow at the UN foundation, Biniaz expressed scepticism about the wisdom of attempting to unify a diverse body of law.

“There is no doubt that more needs to be done, both nationally and internationally, to protect the environment,” she wrote. “It is tempting, particularly during the Trump era, to welcome any concerted effort to do so. The issue is whether the proposed ‘Global Pact’ is the right vehicle for enhancing environmental protection.”

The pact “could create substantial legal confusion”, according to Biniaz, while doing nothing to overcome key obstacles to environmental protection: lack of resources or enforcement capacity.

The pact would have to overcome widespread political resistance to legally-binding international agreements on specific issues – not least climate change. Under the Paris Agreement, national climate targets, arguably the foundations of the deal, could not be made legally binding. “The inclusion of climate change alone would guarantee a difficult negotiation,” Biniaz wrote, adding that any mutually agreeable decision would end up riddled with caveats and exemptions.

Report: Canada doubles contribution to UN climate science panel

Her reservations were echoed by Teresa Ribera, director of Paris-based sustainable development think tank Iddri. “It is good that the French are so committed to this idea, to make a diplomatic effort to push for political, economic and individual freedom and values connected to the environment,” she said. “The main question is: what is the added value of the exercise?”

Pursuing a global pact risked creating a political backlash or destabilising existing initiatives, Ribera told Climate Home, asking: “Does this really push the agenda or create confusion?”

Others were more supportive. John Knox, UN special rapporteur on human rights and the environment, welcomed France starting a conversation on the issue.

“You can quibble with bits of the language of the pact, but I think in principle it is worthwhile,” said Knox, a legal professor at Wake Forest University in South Carolina, US. “One thing I like about the pact is its rights-based approach to environmental protection.”

So far, discussion of the initiative has been largely confined to legal and academic circles. Aguila, who got involved as chair of the environmental law commission of top Paris think tank Club des Juristes, said promotional events were planned in the United States, China, Brazil, Canada and Senegal.

“This is just the beginning of a large campaign that aims to supplement and ease the diplomatic processes,” said Aguila, a partner at law firm Bredin Prat and public law professor at Sciences Po and the Paris Bar School.

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The programme includes a day-long conference at Columbia University on 20 September as part of New York Climate Week. French environment minister Nicolas Hulot, UN environment chief Erik Solheim and economist Jeffrey Sachs are lined up to give introductory remarks along with Fabius and Aguila. Biniaz is speaking on a subsequent panel.

Responding to criticisms of the proposal, Aguila acknowledged that political resistance to legally-binding requirements was an issue. He pointed out that the draft advised the treaty be implemented in a “transparent, non-adversarial and non-punitive manner”. Ultimately, he said, “it will be the task of diplomats to overcome this hurdle in a productive and clever way”.

The general aim was to reinforce ambition on environmental protection, Aguila said. “It constitutes an attempt to create an international set of common and responsible rules, but it is not a universal panacea for environmental issues. There is no such thing as a magic recipe, and I like to conceive the Global Pact as a powerful tool that can prove very efficient in protecting the environment.”

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Edouard Philippe told France Inter radio the government would pursue “rapid, massive and visible” renewable energy development, as reported by Reuters.

Nuclear, which supplies three quarters of the country’s electricity, will continue to provide a “secure base”, he said. Philippe, the centre-right mayor of Le Havre, previously ran public affairs for state nuclear energy group Areva.

His comments followed the appointment of prominent environmental campaigner Nicolas Hulot as minister responsible for energy and ecology on Wednesday.

Nicolas Hulot to be environment minister in France. Great choice!
Lifelong experience in ecology.
Congratulations!https://t.co/DBOfkdqDyM pic.twitter.com/vvqbnSiYFu

— Erik Solheim (@ErikSolheim) May 17, 2017

Hulot has advised previous presidents and pushed green issues onto the political agenda, but never held office before. In a tweet, he said the role offered “a new opportunity for action I cannot ignore”.

Known for presenting TV nature documentary Ushuaïa, Hulot has criticised investments in nuclear capacity, calling for a faster transition to newer technologies.

“As renewable energy becomes more and more competitive, the nuclear industry business model belongs to the past,” he told Le Parisien newspaper in March.

Shares in EDF, the predominantly state-owned utility that runs France’s nuclear fleet, dipped 7% following the announcement. A correction from a similar-sized jump after pro-nuclear Philippe was named prime minister.

In his manifesto, Macron said he would stick to a target of reducing France’s reliance on nuclear to 50% by 2025. He aims to double wind and solar capacity and phase out coal power by 2022.

With @EmmanuelMacron commitment to #ParisAgreement & @N_Hulot as new #environment minister, France likely to have a strong #climate agenda

— Nick Molho (@NickMolho) May 18, 2017

bravo à .@N_Hulot pour relever le gran défi de la transition écologique https://t.co/WBJjOJ06Ba

— Laurence Tubiana (@LaurenceTubiana) May 17, 2017

Congratulations @N_Hulot for your nomination in French government. A committed and knowledgeable person at a key Ministry. Good luck!

— Jean-Christophe Vié (@JChVie) May 18, 2017

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The centrist, pro-EU candidate won two thirds of the vote in a run-off against the far right’s Marine Le Pen.

In a short, sombre speech, he called for national unity and assured world leaders France would be a constructive partner on matters of global concern.

Macron said: “France will be active and mindful of peace, of the balance of power, of international cooperation, of respect for the commitments made on development and the fight against global warming.”

Following Donald Trump’s rise to power in the US and Britain’s vote to leave the EU, a win for Le Pen would have represented a hat-trick for nationalist populism. In contrast, Macron offered a vision of openness to the wider world.

Laurence Tubiana, a key architect of the Paris climate deal turned head of the European Climate Foundation, welcomed the result.

Tonight with the election of Emmanuel Macron Europe won against populism

— Laurence Tubiana (@LaurenceTubiana) May 7, 2017

#Macron is victory for those who want countries to join global alliances to tackle common challenges such as #climate change #ParisAgreement

— Christopher N. Fox (@ChristopherNFox) May 7, 2017

At home, Macron’s climate policies include phasing out coal power and doubling renewable capacity by 2022, and raising the carbon price to €100 a tonne by 2030.

He has also proposed using trade sanctions at an EU level against countries that do not respect the bloc’s environmental standards. That could put pressure on the Trump administration to conform with climate objectives and the UK to avoid weakening environmental protections during Brexit negotiations.

Somewhat provocatively, Macron invited American climate researchers threatened by Trump’s agenda to move to France. “We like innovation, we want innovative people,” he said in a video message.

To deliver on his mandate, Macron will need to secure a base in the parliamentary elections next month. Having founded his own party, En Marche! [Onwards!], a year ago, he has no incumbent lawmakers.

If his candidates cannot replicate Macron’s personal popularity, which was boosted by the stark contrast with Le Pen, it could lead to political gridlock.

An opinion poll published by OpinionWay-SLPV Analytics last week predicted En Marche! would win 249 to 286 seats in the National Assembly, short of the 289 needed for a majority.

Accordingly, climate advocates were cautious about interpreting the result.

“Macron’s victory should not be called a victory for climate in France yet,” said Lucile Dufour, from Climate Action Network France, at a briefing on the sidelines of interim climate talks in Bonn.

“Macron did not make the energy transition a key topic during his campaign. What we can say now is that Macron is unlikely to slow down the French environmental transition. However, if he is not strongly pushed by other countries and also by civil society, he will not accelerate the pace of the energy transition in France.”

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Meanwhile, in Britain’s nascent election campaign, Climate Home has learned Labour plans to unveil new rules for landlords to renovate properties to higher efficiency grades, before they can be rented out.

Rarely considered political catnip, energy efficiency was argued over by French candidates’ during TV debates.

As the tightly-fought four-way race heads towards a first round vote this weekend, building renovations have made climate policy relevant to alienated working class voters in France. 

One in three French households are energy poor and, with buildings continuing to account for more than 40% of carbon emissions, renovations have stealthily climbed the political agenda. An existing law that obliges renovations of all buildings in the ‘F’ and ‘G’ energy classes by 2025 has popularised such programmes.

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Left-wing firebrand Jean-Luc Melenchon has promised 700,000 building renovations a year for the poorest householders, while his socialist opponent Benoit Hamon has flagged a stunning €100bn renovation plan.

Less striking but better-costed is a €4bn a year renovations programme proposed by the front-runner in opinion polls, Emmanuel Macron, who would also scrap a one-year stay on energy transition tax credits and introduce free efficiency audits.

Even the neo-fascist Marine Le Pen has a manifesto pledge (number 132) to make insulation a “budgetary priority” in public procurement policy. 

Adrian Joyce, the director of Renovate Europe, which is promoting the issue, hailed the new-found prominence that energy renovations were receiving in the election.

“It represents a political breakthrough in that a solid cross-party consensus around the need to accelerate energy renovation has emerged,” he told Climate Home.

In France, a broad alliance of businesses, trade unions, Catholic networks, environmentalists and housing associations were key to turning energy renovations into a consensus issue.

Danyel Dubreuil, a spokesperson for the Renovons (Lets Renovate!) campaign, which has lobbied the candidates on the issue, said: “One of the things that surprised the candidates’ teams was that we were so diverse, and that we produced a cost-benefit analysis.”

“It was a shock for them to see that this was such a big issue – with 7m flats or houses in really bad shape – and that it would not be so expensive to upgrade their energy ranking.”

Warming up cold homes could have universal appeal, said Joyce.

“We spend 90% of our time in buildings so working on them affects everyone positively. The sooner other countries facing elections – like the UK and Germany – witness a similar breakthrough, the better,” he said.

Scotland is currently in the midst of a public consultation about how to upgrade its building stock after declaring energy efficiency to be a national infrastructure priority.

But in the wider UK a remaining Green Deal obligation on landlords to improve the efficiency of energy-leaking buildings later this decade has been so whittled down by the government as to make it unworkable, according to Erica Hope, senior associate at the European Climate Foundation.

Barry Gardiner, UK Labour’s shadow climate spokesman described transport and buildings emissions as “the biggest challenge to meeting our climate budgets”. The challenge is likely to spawn a new election initiative in that country too.   

“We will bring forward clear [building efficiency] standards as part of our manifesto,” Gardiner said. “We are looking to upgrade the obligations on landlords in particular to make sure that properties have to be of a certain energy efficiency level, within a certain timeframe, before they can be rented out.”

“The key thing for the UK is how we go about renovating older housing stock and that is where we need to set regulations in place,” he added.

The policy reflects similar thinking to Labour’s 2015 election manifesto, which proposed a “decency standard” for rented properties.

Britain has some of the worst-insulated housing stock in Europe. Cold homes cost the NHS some €1bn a year in direct treatment, and are rated the second highest risk on Britain’s housing health and safety system.

In just one city – Liverpool – energy poverty was fingered as the culprit in 500 deaths and around 5,000 illnesses in one survey in 2013.

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Emmanuel Macron, a former finance minister who has set up his En Marche party to run for the Elysee Palace, delivered a strong rebuke to president Donald Trump’s administration – which looks set to cull climate politics and funding.

“I do know how your new president has now decided to jeopardise your budget, your initiatives as he is extremely sceptical about climate change. I have no doubt about climate change and how committed we have to be regarding this issue,” he said.

I have a message for you guys. #ScienceMarch pic.twitter.com/ZnkFIIksdx

— Emmanuel Macron (@EmmanuelMacron) February 10, 2017

“So I have two messages. For the French and European researchers we will preserve our budgets ,we will reinforce our investment, our public and private investment to do more and accelerate our initiative in order to deliver in line with COP21 [the historic climate summit hosted by Paris].

“And second – a message for you guys. Please, come to France, you are welcome, it’s your nation. We like innovation, we want innovative people, we want people working on climate change, energy, renewables and new technologies.”

For more context: visit our US climate politics site

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It details how the country will meet a 2030 goal to cut emissions 40% on 1990 levels and 75% by 2050, requiring “major changes” to the country’s economy.

“Investment needs are massive and the recasting of production and consumption patterns is essential,” it says.

Much of the plan was published in late 2015 ahead of the COP21 Paris climate summit, where 195 countries agreed on a UN pact to limit warming to well below 2C above pre-industrial levels.

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As in the UK, France has adopted a series of carbon budgets with the first three running 2015-2018, 2019-2023 and 2024-2028.

To meet its 2050 target the country needs to cut 9-10 megatonnes of carbon dioxide every year says the report, and cut energy emissions 96% by mid century.

“The rate of reduction must be stepped up, without jeopardising the economic development of France, or merely exporting these emissions by relocating the most emission-intensive activities. The key issue at stake here is France’s carbon footprint,” says the report, which was signed off by environment chief Segolene Royal.

A government source told Climate Home national strategies on adaptation and reducing atmospheric pollution would be added to the climate plan “in the coming months”.

The post France delivers 2050 climate plan to UN appeared first on Climate Home News.

It is now certain that less than one year will have passed from the beginning of the COP21 climate negotiations in December 2015 to the moment when the Paris Agreement will come into force.

These weeks and months are when the nations of the world stared over the precipice of catastrophic climate change and chose to act. By standards of international diplomacy, the ratification of the Paris Agreement has been remarkably swift.

Leaders of the many nations who have ratified the deal deserve our praise and gratitude.

From the biggest emitters, China, the United States and the European Union, to the smallest Island nations that are most at risk from the effects of climate change, each has recognized the scale of the threat we face and acted with commendable speed.

Habitat III: what to expect from the UN’s urban summit

After 20 years of waiting for an inter-governmental agreement to tackle climate change it is fantastic that nation states are now moving so rapidly to bring it into international law.

There is no time to waste because the next years are crucial. Global greenhouse gas emissions must peak by 2020 and then fall rapidly.

The next step is for countries to put forward national emissions plans that are as ambitious as the aspiration of the Paris Agreement. Almost none are at present.

Fortunately, mayors of the world’s great cities have also been using the months since December 2015 to ramp up climate action.

This determination to act by mayors is consistent with more than a decade of international leadership on climate change before the Paris Agreement, through powerful networks like the C40 Cities and common platforms for declaring commitments like the Global Covenant of Mayors.

At the height of the COP21 climate negotiations, Paris City Hall hosted more than 1,000 mayors and city leaders at the Climate Summit for Local Leaders.

This local and global display of commitment by mayors was instrumental in showing national leaders negotiating to secure the Paris Agreement that they were far from alone.

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Throughout 2016 cities have continued to deliver concretely ambitious climate action.

Last week, Paris confirmed the pedestrianisation of the right bank of the Seine, building on its world famous cycle hire scheme to further creating a city that prioritises sustainable transport.

This summer, Rio de Janeiro hosted the most ecological Olympic and Paralympic Games in modern history with new light railway lines, 150km of rapid bus lanes, and hundreds of kilometres of bike lanes that are creating a mass transit revolution in the city.

Mexico City is taking decisive action to create a clean and efficient transport network, through the growth of its Bus Rapid Transport as well as the subway systems, while creating cycling infrastructure.

This includes cycle lanes, bike parking and a public bike share system, all integrated to the city’s transport card.

In pictures: the energy poor of Africa’s biggest slum

One of reasons that city leaders have been particularly bold is because we work together. Through networks like C40 we are learning from each other in delivering, so that success gets copied quickly and replicated around the world.

The cost of innovation is reduced and we are all able to learn from inevitable mistakes.

Cities will prove it again during the C40 Mayors Summit 2016 in Mexico City from 30 November – 2 December 2 where the most world’s most influential mayors, representing 650 million citizens will work together and present their common goals for a sustainable future, one year after COP21 in Paris.

Cities are leading the way to make the Paris Agreement concrete for citizens, but as mayors, we cannot do it alone. We welcome the leadership of national leaders in committing to the Paris Agreement but now we call on Presidents and Prime Ministers of every nation to empower their cities.

C40’s research shows that one third of the remaining global ‘safe’ carbon budget could be locked-in by urban policy decisions taken just between now and 2020.

Report: China, India back $150m GEF initiative to green cities

Supporting mayors to be able to take the most far-sighted decisions on, for example, land-use planning, transport infrastructure, and building codes, could be the single most efficient way for nations to kick-start their commitments under the Paris Agreement

For example, mayors of the world’s great cities have identified sustainable infrastructure projects, innovative policies and carbon cutting initiatives, but yet too often they are not able to deliver on their ambitions because they lack access to finance.

National governments must now help mayors and cities by devolving authority over finance for sustainable infrastructure.

In parallel, international financial institutions must grant cities direct access to green funds and lending mechanisms to finance their ambitious climate plans.

Our responsibility is huge and citizens reminds us of this every day. If today is a moment of great hope, we must never forget that the hard work of making the Paris Agreement a reality has only just begun. Cities are ready to help in getting the job done.

Anne Hidalgo is Mayor of Paris, Eduardo Paes is Mayor of Rio de Janeiro and Miguel Ángel Mancera is Mayor of Mexico City

The post After ratification, cities can deliver the Paris climate deal appeared first on Climate Home News.

The environment minister and current president of UN climate talks tweeted that ask at the Our Ocean conference in New York.

J’appelle membres #OMI à soutenir démarche de la France pr réduire émissions CO2 trafic maritime #OurOcean #Ocean pic.twitter.com/KyUp0DPv7i

— Ségolène Royal (@RoyalSegolene) September 15, 2016

It was not answered by US president Barack Obama or secretary of state John Kerry. Both spoke of the threat to the oceans from climate change without mentioning the maritime sector’s role in tackling it.

That reflects dynamics at IMO talks, where France and 10 other countries are up against resistance from major emerging economies – and the US is not taking sides.

The progressive alliance, which includes Germany, Morocco and the Marshall Islands, says shipping must do its “fair share” of climate efforts. While international transport was not explicitly covered by the Paris climate agreement, they argue all sectors will be needed to meet its goal of holding global warming below 2C.

China, Brazil and India are concerned that will lead to higher costs on seaborne trade, inhibiting economic growth.

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Frustrated by slow progress in the IMO, EU lawmakers are lobbying to include shipping in the bloc’s emissions trading system next decade. A broad coalition from greens to the centre-right supports making ship operators pay for permits to cover their climate pollution in EU waters.

“After the Paris Agreement, the shipping sector needs to contribute,” Swedish MEP Jytte Guteland told Climate Home.

“For several years, the IMO has discussed how to get progress, but we also need to see action for climate policy… If you look at the history, we can see… when the EU has made progress, it has had a positive influence on the IMO discussion.”

It is not a popular stance with ship owners, who prefer all regulation to be applied at international level.

Simon Bennett, policy director at the International Chamber of Shipping said at a London conference last week: “Because of the dangerous market distortion, this [ETS proposal] is something to which the ICS is completely opposed.”

Report: Shipping industry prepares for looming climate tax

There is also a tussle between the EU and IMO over fuel use data reporting for individual ships, seen as important to developing efficiency policies. The IMO is expected to sign off data collection rules next month, putting Brussels under pressure to cancel its own, more stringent monitoring plans.

Governance of the high seas is complicated by the existence of “flags of convenience”, allowing ships to register with countries that impose minimal regulations. Panama, Liberia and the Marshall Islands have the world’s biggest shipping registries, accounting for more than 40% of global tonnage.

Mark Rosen, shipping law expert at Virginia-based think tank CNA, expressing his personal opinions, said it was “politically naive” to expect all maritime rule-making to happen through the IMO.

On a whole range of issues, from illegal fishing to slavery, he argues port states can enforce rules where flag states are unable or unwilling to.

Rosen said the US was trying to play a “bridging role” in climate discussions at the IMO and did not have the domestic backing to go further.

“Obama is good at polemics, but when he actually tries to go and get legislation passed to be able to implement his rhetoric, he hasn’t gotten anywhere,” said Rosen.

“If they [negotiators] aligned themselves with very aggressive ‘here, let’s have a carbon tax’ [position], when it got back to the US there would have been a firestorm.”

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