Tribune. The current decade is decisive in the fight once morest climate change. To achieve the objectives of the Paris agreements, we must reduce our greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions by 55% by 2030, whereas we reduced them by only 20% between 1990 and 2020. whether for mitigation, adaptation to climate change and other major aspects such as the protection of biodiversity, one of the most important keys to achieving this is to significantly increase long-term investments to develop: technologies cleanliness, the electric car, the future energy mix or the energy renovation of housing.
We will gain both ecologically and economically, since oil and gas are necessarily imported, unlike clean products and solutions. During the health crisis, the French saved a lot, which should make it possible to finance these investments. Private investment will have the leading role, but public intervention will remain necessary. Some of these investments are themselves public (public transport infrastructure, local authority facilities).
Several categories of the population will need additional means to invest (low-income households, SMEs). And above all, the payback period for most of these investments is too long, for households and businesses alike. The main reason for this difficulty: the cost of clean products and solutions remains too high compared to that of carbon products and solutions.
A radically different context
Public finances, via taxation or budgetary aid, can and must reduce this gap. This is not the case today: for understandable social reasons, we are trying to mitigate the rise in the price of fossil fuels, but we forget that we should suddenly help energy savings and clean solutions more.
A pro-climate public finance strategy is therefore a major challenge for the next five-year term. Barring a new and serious health rebound, the context will be radically different from “whatever the cost”, which the various presidential candidates do not seem to have fully integrated. The return of concerns regarding inflation and indebtedness makes it very likely in the short or medium term the rise in interest rates, which can already be seen in the United States.
Our country’s public finance situation adds an additional risk. With a debt representing nearly 120% of GDP, France is in a very different situation from countries with a more moderate level of debt, between 60 and 80% of GDP (Germany, Netherlands). With regard to the public deficit, this will continue to be, in 2022, higher than the euro zone average.
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