French climate council highlights the need to accelerate climate action

The French climate council (Haut conseil pour le climat, HCC) has released its first report, which estimates that current climate policies are not sufficient to reach the carbon neutrality target by 2050, and recommends to put the low carbon national strategy ("stratégie nationale bas-carbone" (SNBC)) at the center of public policies.

Indeed, the first carbon budget set for the 2015-2018 period (excluding Land Use, Land Use Change and Forestry, LULUCF) was exceeded by 3.5% (62 MtCO₂eq), according to preliminary statistics, and the average 1.1%/year drop in greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions is nearly twice too low to reach climate targets (reduction target of 1.9%/year). The cut in GHG emissions should exceed 3%/year by 2025 to meet the trajectory set in the SNBC. When taking LULUCF into account, the carbon budget is surpassed by 10%, due to lower than expected carbon capture by forests. Moreover, emissions from the transport sector are steadily rising since 1990. Climate investments increased by an average 4%/year over the 2015-2018 period, reaching €41.4bn in 2018, which remains lower than the necessary investments to meet the SNBC trajectory, and much lower than climate-harming investments (€75bn in 2017).

Consequently, the HCC recommends to ensure to conformity of policies and large national projects with the SNBC, to strengthen climate tools (such as norms and regulations, taxes, subsidies and tradable quotas), to identify structural changes required to reach carbon neutrality and to ensure a fair low carbon transition for the most vulnerable citizens. It also recommends to adapt the SNBC to all territorial levels, to systematically evaluate the GHG impact of policies and to strengthen the second carbon budget (2019-2023). The 2050 carbon neutrality target is deemed consistent with the Paris Agreement but it doesn't cover French emissions from international transports and importations, that the HCC recommends to integrate in the SNBC.