2023-10-27 06:00:37
Published on Oct 27, 2023 at 8:00
The ecological transition, now omnipresent in public debate, is taking hold in economic studies institutes. The latest initiative to date, the French Observatory of Economic Conditions (OFCE) announced on Wednesday the creation of an Economy and Environment department which will be headed by economist Anne Epaulard.
“The objective is to quantify the effects of the ecological transition and to think regarding how to make it more harmonious. The climate issue will have repercussions on all forecasts, whether economic growth or the labor market,” explains the expert who participated in the report by Jean Pisani-Ferry and Selma Mahfouz on “the economic impacts of action on climate”.
“Essential subjects”
“It’s a project that I have been carrying out for a long time,” confides the president of the OFCE, Xavier Ragot, while emphasizing that for the institution, “the subject is not new.” “For more than ten years, the OFCE has been developing the ThreeME macroeconomic model with Ademe, which makes it possible to evaluate CO emissions.2 and energy consumption sector by sector,” he recalls.
This model was used by Jean Pisani-Ferry and Selma Mahfouz for their report. The Treasury Department is also interested in carrying out its own evaluations. A year following the creation of the General Secretariat for Ecological Planning (SGPE), the powerful Bercy administration visibly intends to accelerate on the subject and has just created a sub-directorate dedicated to the climate issue with at its head the economist Stéphane Sorbe, as revealed by “Le Monde”. “These are essential subjects, there are many economic and financial questions raised by the ecological transition,” he explains daily.
“Increased national accounts”
Faced with the growing importance of the problem, many structures are already working, each in their own way. In 2020, the Rexecode institute created an Energy-climate division led by Raphaël Trotignon “to think regarding how to achieve the objectives and find the best yield-cost couples”, explains its general director Denis Ferrand.
The National Institute of Statistics is also mobilized and invests in several fields: “cross-reference economic and environmental statistics, notably with the publication of ‘augmented national accounts’ – in order to propose new indicators on the carbon footprint for example -, recast our modeling tools in order to integrate climate issues and ramp up our eco-environmental studies,” says Nicolas Carnot, director of economic studies and syntheses at INSEE.
Evaluation of the bonus-malus
In the spring, the Institute of Public Policies (IPP) also formed a team around Paul Dutronc-Postel, who is preparing two reports in collaboration with France Stratégie, an organization attached to Matignon: one on the evaluation of the industry’s decarbonization policy, the other on the evaluation of the ecological bonus-malus and the conversion bonus. France Stratégie also produces “methodology and prospective work, for example on the jobs and qualifications necessary to successfully complete the transition and help manage public policies”.
The Banque de France is not to be outdone and has been working for six years on climate economics and how to integrate it into monetary policy, within the global network Network for Greening the Financial System (NGFS) made up of bankers central offices and a supervisor.
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