It is a little the results of the bac before the hour for the executive. The High Council for the Climate (HCC) publishes this Tuesday evening its annual report 2021, the third, evaluating the government strategy on climate issues and its consistency with the objectives set. This is the main mission for which this independent body of thirteen experts was created in November 2018, at the request of Emmanuel Macron.
For its first two evaluations, the HCC said that France was not on the right track and did not give itself all the means to achieve it. Is the copy better this time around?
A rate of decline that accelerated in 2019
The HCC notes in any case some progress on the front of the reduction of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. Let’s move on to the 9% drop in French GHG emissions estimated for 2020, “attributable to Covid-19 and thus economic”, insists Corinne Le Quéré, president of the HCC. All the same, “we observe a slight accentuation of the downward trend in 2019,” continues the Franco-Canadian climatologist. The rate was – 1.9% against – 1.7% until then. “
Three sectors contribute mainly to it. Buildings, industry and energy production. These improvements can be explained in particular by efficiency gains in the manufacturing processes and the decarbonisation of the energy used for the second, and finally the development of renewable energies and the improvement of energy efficiency for the third. Efforts to continue and even to intensify, encourages Corinne Le Quéré.
Transport and agriculture lagging behind
So much for the good points. The HCC also highlights the bad. The transport sector in particular, the leading source of GHG emissions in France and the only sector to increase between 1990 and 2019. “The main causes are the growth in demand for transport, as well as the lack of modal shift, particularly towards rail ”, points out Corinne Le Quéré. The other sector lagging behind is agriculture. France has reduced its agricultural emissions less – – 9% since 1990 – than its main European neighboring countries, says the report. “There is too little ambition in this area,” regrets Corinne Le Quéré.
A criticism that returns elsewhere in the report. “Overall, public policies are still insufficiently aligned with the National Low-Carbon Strategy (SNBC),” writes the HCC. This roadmap describes, for each sector, how France intends to reduce its GHG emissions to reach the target of -40% [par rapport à 1990] that it has set for 2030. This non-alignment raises all the more questions as the EU has just raised its climate ambition by now aiming for a 55% reduction in 2030, against 40% until then.
Go from – 1.9% in 2019 to – 3% from 2021
France will have to keep pace, at least in part. However, it has already fallen behind on its current objectives in recent years. A decline of 1.9% is therefore far from enough. “The pace will have to practically double to reach – 3% from 2021 and – 3.3% on average over the period of the third carbon budget (2024-2028)”, executive Corinne Le Quéré. “The recovery plan, but also everything that is under discussion in Parliament [
le projet de loi Climat et résilience] are going to allow us to accelerate ”, assures one in Matignon, where one does not despair of improving including on the sectors lagging behind. “On transport, we are on the eve of a very important structural change with the electrification of the vehicle fleet,” we resume. In 2020, 11% of new vehicles sold were electric. This is much more than what had been imagined in the scenarios and we are making sure that this trend is confirmed. “
The urgent need to speed up adaptation
New to this report, the HCC does not only address the issue of climate change mitigation. In other words, everything that is done to reduce our GHG emissions. The body also points to the urgency of stepping up on the issue of adaptation to a climate which is already changing. “Two thirds of the French population are already strongly or very strongly exposed to climate risk,” recalls the report. “It is not only natural disasters which are increasing, but also chronic stress, these events which will, by their recurrence, destabilize a certain number of systems”, details the geographer Magali Reghezza-Zit, lecturer at the School. Normal Superior (ENS) and one of the thirteen members of the HCC.
Agriculture is on the front line, it which will have (when it has not already started) “to change the dates of sowing, to modify the varieties planted, even to design new production systems”, lists Corinne Le Quéré. Among the sectors concerned, Magali Reghezza-Zit also adds that of water, tourism, insurance …
Already shrinking room for maneuver?
France has already adopted a National Climate Change Adaptation Plan (PNACC). It includes some sixty disparate actions that would benefit from defining a more ambitious trajectory, estimates the HCC. “We must define a national strategy with priority objectives, to then refine territory by territory, because the regions do not all face the same problems”, invites Magali Reghezza-Zit. She also stresses the need to ensure that adaptation and mitigation policies go hand in hand.
Now is the time to accelerate for the geographer. “The more we delay action, the more the scale of climate change will mean that we will no longer be able to adapt, or even rely on our natural carbon sinks. [les forêts, les terres, les océans…] to mitigate it, ”she continues. The room for maneuver has already started to shrink. “French forests, which are suffering from climate change, have captured only three quarters of the amount of CO2 that the SNBC had expected between 2015 and 2019, illustrates Jean-François Soussana, vice-president of the National Institute of agronomic research (Inrae), also among the thirteen. However, it is an essential carbon sink for achieving carbon neutrality. Hence the need to adopt a long-term national strategy that allows forests to adapt to these new climatic conditions. “