“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.

Speaking at the One Planet Summit for biodiversity held in Paris on Monday, French president Emmanuel Macron, UK prime minister Boris Johnson promised to set aside a significant portion of climate finance for projects that help soils and plants soak up carbon, while creating habitats for wildlife.

The one-day biodiversity summit co-hosted by France, the UN and the World Bank and attended by heads of state, UN chief António Guterres and leaders of international and financial institutions, aimed to converge efforts to reverse biodiversity loss with addressing the climate crisis.

Macron committed to earmark 30% of France’s climate funding by 2030 for “nature-based solutions”. “We need to take actions now that will help us change the world and make it a better place by 2030,” he said.

As an example that links the climate and biodiversity agendas, Macron led a pledging conference for the Great Green Wall. An ambitious vision to create a 15 kilometre wide and 8,000 kilometre long strip of vegetation across 11 countries in the Sahel, the initiative will halt desertification, bolster food security and create millions of jobs, Macron said.

Mobilising new funding to protect nature was one of the summit’s four major themes. UN-endorsed research found an additional $700 billion per year is needed to reverse human destruction of the natural world.

Research by The Nature Conservancy and 15 other institutions claims nature-based solutions can provide up to 37% of the emission reductions needed by 2030 to keep global temperature rise below 2C. However, only 3% of international climate finance fits that category, with the bulk going to cut emissions from energy use.

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Joining by video link, prime minister Boris Johnson said £3bn of the UK’s £11.6bn international climate finance commitment to 2025 will be spent on supporting nature and biodiversity.

This will include marine conservation, tackling the illegal timber trade and deforestation and conserving habitats such as mangroves that protect communities from climate impacts.

“Obviously it’s right to focus on climate change and cut CO2 emissions but we won’t achieve balance with our planet unless we protect nature as well. Climate change must now be seen as part of an overall agenda to protect the natural world,” he said.

NGO Oxfam noted the funds came out of an aid budget the UK government had recently cut. “As important as [nature and biodiversity] are, the first priority of overseas aid should be the alleviation of poverty,” said campaigner Tracy Carty.

Prime minister Justin Trudeau said Canada’s future climate contributions will also include funds for biodiversity and committed up to $44m (C$55m) to the UN’s land degradation neutrality fund.

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Vanessa Pérez-Cirera, deputy lead climate and energy practice at WWF, told Climate Home News that while connecting the climate and nature agendas was welcome, governments should “not play musical chairs” with climate finance by pitting different needs against each other.

Instead, funding for nature should be new and additional with donor countries demonstrating coherent policies at home to address the drivers of biodiversity loss and end harmful subsidies for fossil fuels and unstainable agriculture practices, she said.

Kelsey Perlman, forest and climate campaigner at NGO Fern, told Climate Home News that while many will want to “jump for joy at an attempt to address this financing gap for nature,” how the money is disbursed will be key.

“Everybody wants to bridge climate and biodiversity but that means that the way things have been done in the past probably need to be done significantly differently,” she said.

Perlman called for “transformative projects that put biodiversity at the forefront” and focus on the rights of communities living in protected and restored areas. Bilateral agreements between donor countries and vulnerable nations could offer an opportunity to do this while fulfilling climate goals.

“Resilience in any ecosystem is based on its biodiversity and not on the carbon that it stores,” she added.

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The UN biodiversity body has yet to reschedule a critical summit in Kunming, China that was postponed from 2020 due to the coronavirus pandemic. Nations are expected to agree on a framework to protect the world’s biodiversity for the next decade.

An alliance of more than 50 countries committed to protect at least 30% of the planet’s land and oceans by 2030, known as the High Ambition Coalition for Nature and People, was formally launched at the summit, co-chaired by the Costa Rica, France and the UK.

More than 20 countries including Kenya, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Mexico and Angola joined the alliance, which hopes to form the basis for an ambitious global agreement at Kunming.

Governments are also due to raise climate ambition and put the world on track to limiting global heating “well below 2C” when they meet in Glasgow, UK, for the Cop26 summit in November.

“2021 must be the year we reconcile humanity and nature,” Guterres told the summit. “The pandemic recovery is an opportunity to change course… and revive economies, build resilience and rescue biodiversity.”

“Nature-based solutions such as Africa’s Great Green Wall are especially promising,” Guterres said, adding preserving the world’s biodiversity could create 191 million jobs by 2030, citing analysis from the World Economic Forum.

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Abdoulaye Dia, executive secretary of Pan African Agency for the Great Green Wall, said additional financing for the initiative needed to consider the debt sustainability of Sahel countries, calling for 60% of new finances to come from donors and 40% from concessional finance.

An estimated $4.3 billion annually is needed to restore 8.2 million hectares of land every year in the Sahel region to 2030 to achieve the Great Green Wall’s goals.

More than $14bn of new funding was promised at the summit for Great Green Wall for 2021-2025, including new commitments from the African Development Bank, the World Bank, the European Investment Bank and the French development agency.

The Green Climate Fund (GCF) and the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) announced projects worth $925m were being elaborated under a new investment programme to boost climate finance for rural populations in the Sahel, focusing on sustainable agriculture.

The GCF hopes to leverage $1 billion in resources for the Great Green Wall in 2021 and 2022.

The post France and UK lead push for climate finance to restore nature appeared first on Climate Home News.

Following months of negotiations and an 11-hour marathon board meeting, EU finance ministers agreed to end lending to oil, gas and coal projects by the end of 2021 – a year later than initially proposed by the bank in July.

Strong initial pushback from eastern European countries facing an uphill climb to reduce their reliance on carbon-intensive energy sources was overcome by widening the window for new gas projects to receive funding.

The EIB is now a step closer to become the European “climate bank” promised by incoming EU Commission president Ursula Von der Leyen.

The new policy signals a change of gear in support for clean energy investments. How other major development banks will react to the news is one to watch.

Climate plot

What can the EU offer China to convince Beijing to ramp up its ambition?

That is the question EU diplomats will have to answer over the next 10 months as the bloc prepares for an exceptional EU-China summit in Leipzig, Germany, in September 2020.

The EU wants to use the meeting to broker a bilateral deal on climate ambition, weeks before the UN climate talks in Glasgow where countries are due to update their climate plans.

In 2014, a bilateral agreement between the US and China committed the world’s two largest emitters to cut emissions, underpinning the Paris Agreement.

With a much smaller share of global emissions, the EU is unlikely to have the clout to make it a climate only affair. What else could the EU bring to the table is not yet obvious. French president Emmanuel Macron was in China last week to work it out. See our report.

Sucking it out of the air

In its World Energy Outlook, the IEA explores what it would take to achieve the Paris Agreement’s tougher 1.5C goal. Its answer: sucking lots of carbon out of the atmosphere.

Under one scenario, the world would overshoot the 1.5C target and reach net zero emissions in 2070. Global temperatures would then be pulled down using negative emissions technologies – something one lead scientist described as incompatible with long-term sustainable development.

Due diligence  

The Green Climate Fund has accredited a Chilean private equity firm specialised in wealth management as protesters denouncing raging against income inequalities continue to clash with security forces in Santiago’s streets.

The fund’s board has also partnered with the subsidiary of an Indian bank which collapsed in 2018. Concerns over due diligence are running high.

Separately, the fund has allocated $407.8 million to 13 green projects helping vulnerable countries curb emissions and cope with the impacts of climate change.

Political limbo 

Sunday’s general election in Spain – the fourth in four years – has once again failed to resolve the political deadlock. The socialists won the most seats but fell 55 short of a majority.

Difficult political negotiations to form a government resume as the country scrambles to host Cop25. The negotiations are not expected to impact the UN climate talks, with political wrangling anticipated to go beyond the meeting’s 2 December kick off date.

Quick hits

• European Investment Bank ends lending to fossil fuel projects
• IEA World Energy Outlook outlines 1.5C scenario
• GCF partners with Chilean private equity firm as unrest continues
• EU plots climate deal with China
• Stakeholders push for progress on France’s climate adaptation plans
• With UN climate talks looming, Spanish election continues political uncertainty

And in climate conversations

• Economic opportunity should see US get on board with shipping clean-up
• The world’s foremost energy outlook is still leading us to catastrophic climate change

The post Banking on the future – Climate Weekly appeared first on Climate Home News.