French President Emmanuel Macron presented an environmental planning package to halve carbon emissions by 2030 through increased energy efficiency and industrial production of clean technologies.
He said the green transition should focus on creating incentives rather than imposing direct obligations, according to Politico.
"We want an affordable and fair ecology, an ecology that leaves no one without a solution," Macron said, stressing that France's green policy should not be punitive.
The French plan comes at a time when other countries are facing similar choices, it said. For example, Great Britain is abandoning its climate goals for electoral reasons, and Germany is increasingly questioning the EU's environmental agenda.
Macron reaffirmed his commitment to reducing emissions without burdening citizens with costly obligations. In particular, France will not ban boilers running on fuel oil or gas.
"Like others, we could have completely banned gas boilers, but since we are a large manufacturer of gas boilers, we decided to insist on an incentive policy," he said, adding that financial support was planned for the heat pump sector to triple its production by 2027 .
The article said that France is putting €7 billion of additional cash into the 2024 budget for climate goals, namely:
- €2.2 billion to increase the energy efficiency of buildings;
- €1.8 billion to stimulate energy technologies, in particular hydrogen and biomethane;
- €1.4 billion for farming and forest development.
Macron highlighted that the government had received pledges from France's 50 biggest polluters to cut their emissions by 45% after the proposed financial support.
He also added that the country will close the last two coal-fired power plants by 2027. They were due to be finally shut down in 2022, but have remained active through the energy crisis, when almost half of France's nuclear reactors stopped generating electricity due to maintenance and technical problems.
Macron said France would "take back control" of its electricity prices by the end of the year. However, he gave no details on how the country could do this as part of the EU's common electricity market.
As EcoPolitic reported earlier, the French Ministry of Energy said that the country will include EU climate goals in its future laws on environmental and energy planning, compensating for delays in submitting an updated National Energy and Climate Plan.
