- Should we put aside the ecological transition, the time to allow companies to recover from the current crisis? States and economic sectors are launching calls or taking measures to this end.
- This Wednesday, the Institute of the economy for the climate takes the opposite by publishing a proposal of recovery plan for France focused on massive public investments in key sectors of the ecological transition.
- The idea? Make ecological transition the keystone to get out of the coronavirus crisis. Because the industries that compete there today are essential sectors of the economy, but also because they prepare for resilience to future crises.
Have we done the third? More than half ? Or are we still far from all that? Difficult to know when the containment will be lifted… In the meantime, the post-crisis is preparing with stimulus plans, to heal the economic wounds caused by the health crisis of the coronavirus.
Already on March 12, Emmanuel Macron claimed to have "asked the government to prepare a national and European recovery plan". On Monday, the eighteen presidents of regions announced in turn that they were going to work on a plan to revive the economy in connection with the state.
What place will these plans make for the environmental objectives set before the crisis? Will they be set aside in the name of business survival? "Some signs are not going in the right direction," observes Patrice Geoffron, professor of economics at Paris-Dauphine University. The economist cites the American Environment Agency, which has just issued a decree allowing polluting companies to derogate from environmental constraints to deal with the crisis. "This decree has no deadline, and nothing says that it will not be maintained in the recovery plan," said the economist.
Don't make the same mistake as in 2008?
In Europe too, there are pressures to put aside the ecological transition while recovering from the health crisis. "Poland and the Czech Republic have asked Brussels to leave aside the Green Pact [the new EU climate roadmap, which must make it a world leader in this field], recalls Kévin Puisieux, responsible for" economy and finance "at the Nicolas Hulot Foundation (FNH). For their part, German car manufacturers are pushing for a moratorium on the objectives of reducing CO 2 emissions from their vehicles *. "
The risk, then, is to fall into the cracks of the financial crisis of 2008. "Of the 10.7 billion euros of investments planned in the French stimulus plan, only 2 billion were favorable to the climate, 0.2 billion was against it, and the rest was just undetermined, ”illustrates the deputy Matthieu Orphelin (Liberty and Territories). “A missed opportunity, abounds Benoît Leguet, director general of I4CE (Institute of the economy for the climate), a think-tank specialized on the economic questions related to the climate. Where we could have made more marked investments in favor of ecological transition, we have not done so. This lack of ambition partly explains the backlog accumulated in 2020 in France. We can no longer afford to lose another decade. "
Climate as the keystone of the recovery plan
This is the whole purpose of the proposed recovery plan that this Wednesday published I4CE, and which Patrice Geoffron has also worked on. "The note submits about thirty measures covering seven key sectors of the National Low Carbon Strategy (SNBC), which describes, for each sector, how France intends to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions", summarizes Hadrien Hainaut, head of project at I4CE.
This ranges from the energy renovation of private housing to cycling facilities, including the production of renewable electricity, the deployment of electric vehicles, railway infrastructure, the development of urban public transport, the energy renovation of tertiary housing. In these seven sectors, I4CE recommends not only to maintain the objectives set before the crisis, "but also to associate a public financing plan of 7 billion euros per year until 2023. It will trigger 19 billion euros of annual investment, public and private, ”says Hadrien Hainaut.
Climate action to also prepare for future crises?
By making climate action the keystone of their recovery plan, the challenge is first to participate in economic recovery. "The activities which contribute to the reduction of greenhouse gases already represent a significant part of the French economy and were on a strong dynamic in recent years *", recalls Hadrien Haineaut. They are also significant employment pools. The energy renovation in the residential building thus generates 200,000 jobs, while 18,000 others are associated with the development of urban public transport, illustrates the note.
But Patrice Geoffron and I4CE invite us to see even further the benefits that there would be to bet on climate action. "We see it a little more each day of confinement," notes the economist. There is a strong demand from populations to learn the right lessons from this health crisis and to prepare tomorrow more resilient societies, that is to say capable of better resisting future crises. However, green investments contribute to it, insists the note, which does not summarize these crises to those only related to global warming. “A mistake, at the end of the crisis, would be to no longer seek to reduce our dependence on imports of hydrocarbons on the pretext that the price of a barrel of oil is currently very low, illustrates Patrice Geoffron. It is possible that the crisis we are experiencing will result in a reduction in production capacity in the oil-producing countries, which could be accompanied by a rise in prices as early as 2021, or in the middle of the decade. We would then again be exposed to social crises, such as that of "yellow vests". "
"Do not limit yourself to public investments"
An example taken up by Kevin Puisieux, but this time to show that "public investments, even if they are a powerful tool for guiding the economy, will not be enough on their own to prevent the economy from falling back into its across. "We will have to find mechanisms - standards, prohibitions, fiscal policies - to ensure that the new strategies that companies will develop after containment are not harmful to the ecological transition," he continues. In the same way that the government today asks companies activating short-time working not to pay dividends to their shareholders.
On March 25, the Ministry of the Economy also published a list of French companies to be protected. Bruno Le Maire does not exclude, for the most vulnerable, an increase in the participation of the State in their capital, or even nationalizations the time to let pass the storm. If the list is confidential, "some of these companies are certainly in key sectors of the ecological transition," says Kévin Puisieux. The whole question is whether the state will use this situation to influence the strategy of these companies in order to take better account of the environment. Heretofore, her policy has been to stay out of their lives. "
"Not a recovery plan ... but a transformation"
It would be a big turn, therefore. For Matthieu Orphelin, this health crisis calls for others. The deputy asked for example "to mobilize the world of culture, advertising, education to build a new collective imagination, focused on the spirit of solidarity, sobriety and ecological responsibility".
It is one of the twelve post-crisis measures he wrote and sent to the government. No question of talking about a recovery plan, by the way. "It is a transformation plan that we need today," he said.
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* Vehicles placed on the market must not exceed 95 grams of CO2 per kilometer in 2021.
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