Greenhouse gas emissions started to fall again in France last year, with a more marked decline at the end of the year, a trend that the government attributes to its climate policy but which is also the result of cyclical effects.
“Based on these pre-estimates, GHG emissions (greenhouse gases) have resumed their downward trajectory in 2022 after the rebound observed in 2021,” said Monday the Citepa, organization mandated to carry out the French inventory of emissions. It estimates emissions in 2022 at 408 million tons of CO2 equivalent, or 10 million tons or 2.5% less than the previous year. “We observe a return to the inter-annual decline in emissions with the end of the post-Covid-19 rebound effect,” comments Citepa.
In 2021, with the post-pandemic economic recovery, emissions had indeed risen by 6.4% compared to 2020, which had been marked by a massive decline due to the Covid-19-related economic paralysis. Over the first nine months of 2022, these emissions, responsible for global warming, had almost stagnated (-0.3%) compared to the same period of 2021, according to data from Citepa published late last year.
This stagnation was due to a greater use of fossil fuels to compensate for the difficulties of the nuclear fleet, but also to transport.
“sobriety”
But “from October to December 2022, monthly emissions are down sharply compared to those of 2021 (-9% in October, -11% in November, -5% in December),” Citepa said Monday in its latest publication. By sector of activity, the picture is mixed. Thus, annual emissions have increased by 8% in energy in 2022, and more modestly by 2% in transport. On the other hand, they fell by 8% in manufacturing and construction and by 15% in the residential/tertiary sector.
The government welcomed a trend that, in the second half of 2022, reflects, according to it, “the effects of (its) climate policy of recent months”. “Over the fourth quarter of 2022, our emissions have thus fallen by 8.5% compared to the previous year. This is particularly the result of the sobriety plan and mobilization,” commented the Minister of Energy Transition, Agnès Pannier-Runacher.
“In the coming months, I will prepare a new energy and climate change program that will set even more ambitious targets, as there is still a long way to go,” she added.
“trompe-l’oeil
France, in its revised national low-carbon strategy – after not reaching its targets for the period 2015-2018 – has set a carbon budget not to be exceeded for the period 2019-2023 which amounts to 422 MtCO2e/year on average. The average of the pre-estimated emissions over the period 2019-2022 amounts for the moment to 413 Mt CO2, subject to the consolidation of the estimates, says Citepa.
The current trend is nevertheless out of step with the decrease required for France to meet its objective of becoming carbon neutral by 2050. It is committed to reducing its emissions by 40% by 2030, an ambition that must be reinforced to take into account new European objectives (-55% compared to 1990).
According to the High Climate Council (HCC), to achieve these goals, the country would have to double the rate of decline in its emissions to about 16 million tons of CO2 equivalent (-4.7%) per year over the period 2022-2030. Anne Bringault, program coordinator at the Climate Action Network (CAN), also believes that the decreases recorded in 2022 “are a bit of a sham”.
The residential in particular has “benefited a lot from very mild temperatures over the last part of the year, it does not mean that it would happen again,” she notes with AFP. “The industry has also suffered with rising energy prices from cyclical shutdowns that are not really climate change policies, and may not happen again,” she said.
The association is also concerned about the increase in emissions in the transport sector, judging that the latter is “unfortunately still very dependent on fossil fuels”.
