Decarbonation strategy in France

The decarbonation strategy in France aims to reduce greenhouse gas emissions (GHG) to reach carbon neutrality by 2050.

The decarbonation roadmap

The government has been seeking since 2021 to establish a planning in terms of climate and energy: the national low-carbon strategy (SNBC), multi-year energy programming (PPE) and the National Plan for Adaptation to Climate Change (PNACC ) Through three documents which bring together the French strategy for energy and climate (SFEC).
This strategy aims to deal with decarbonization issues in a coherent way and to strengthen the articulation between attenuation and adaptation to climate change:

  • SNBC and PPE must guarantee for all sectors (transport, agriculture, buildings, industry, energy, waste) an adequacy between need and resource (energy, industrial capacity of sectors, skills availability, etc.) or 2030 or for 2050.
  • SNBC and PPE are a certain contribution to the collective objective of the Paris Agreement: maintaining the average temperature well below 2 ° C compared to pre-industrial levels and if possible at 1.5 ° C.
  • The SNBC Establish the attenuation calendar for all sectors, production and processing of energy included.
  • The PPE translates more operationally, for the next 10 years, the orientations of energy policy.
  • The SNBC and the PPE take into account the variability of the evolution of the future climate.

How to produce energy to decarbon?

Nuclear:

Launch of an EPR 2 construction program and recovery of the availability of the existing park in order to reach a level of production of at least 360 TWh/year and if possible of 400 TWh/year.

Photovoltaics:

Multiply up to 6 times the power installed in 2022.
Renewable heat and recovery: multiply by 2 the consumption of heat between 2022 and 2035.

Biofuels:

Increase their use by 40 % by 2030 compared to 2019.

BIOGAZ:

multiply by 5 production by 2035.

Hydroelectricity:

Increase 2.8 GW our capacity by including in particular pumping energy transfer stations (STEP) to increase electricity storage capacities.

Hydrogen:

reach 8 GW deployed by 2035.

Earth’s wind:

Achieving 1.5 GW of additional capacity per year, the maintenance of the current development rate.

What is his ambition?

The ambition is there but it requires obvious coordination between the different actors. It is clear during current negotiations, it is difficult to obtain a consensus. The refusal of one forces to fold the cards. Yet the alert signals are numerous. Some make it an analysis which shows that only their current financial interest counts and that the citizen seems to have little influence. Everyone has understood, disasters must be sufficiently substantial for public authorities to act but as can be seen in the French regions affected by the floods, the victims must face the difficulties of reconstruction in the greatest solitude .

Trajectory, sector by sector

The latest PPEs (multi-year energy programming) and SNBC (national low-carbon strategy) have just been announced by the Minister of Ecological Transition Agnès Pannier-Runacher. Their objective is to give the trajectory to reach carbon neutrality by 2050. The objective is to reduce the gross GHG emissions by 50 % by 2030 compared to 1990 (the objective was – – 40 % in the previous SNBC) “in consistency with the European Green Pact. ».