The Secretary of State for the Sea, Hervé Berville, unveiled on Tuesday the France-Mer 2030 plan, aimed at accelerating the decarbonization of the maritime sector with the objective of the “zero emission ship”, during the Assises de l’économie de la mer in Lille.
Both a ten-month consultation period with all the players in the sector and a cell within the Ministry of the Navy to support them, France-Mer 2030 will offer a “one-stop shop for the State dedicated solely to the decarbonization of the maritime sector and to innovation” with “as a horizon the ship
zero emission”, detailed Mr. Berville.
A decarbonization path will have to be defined for each type of fleet, he said, insisting on the need to quickly remove “technological barriers” to decarbonize fishing, commercial and recreational vessels.
To this end, the government plans to mobilize “300 million euros of public funding by the end of the five-year period” but also to “create a maritime investment fund (…) to multiply support through subsidies, equity investments and guarantees.
This mechanism will have to go hand in hand with the mobilization of private funds, which could lead to a total of one billion euros of investment, Berville hopes.
While only 12% of the ships used in France are built there today, compared to 80% in 1980, stressed Mr. Berville, “we will put back one by one all the technological bricks to go towards the zero emission ship”, which will have to be “the most French possible, from its keel to its fuel cell”.
Stressing the role of training to decarbonize the maritime sector, the Secretary of State also emphasized the ambition to double the number of officers trained in France by 2027.
The CEO of CMA CGM Rodolphe Saadé announced that the French shipowner will “provide the new France-Mer fund with a budget of 200 million euros to help the maritime sector to decarbonize.
“It’s not just about freight, but about everything related to the maritime industry in France,” he said. CMA CGM is to launch a call for projects platform in January 2023.
This sum is part of the €1.5 billion fund already announced by the shipowner to accelerate the decarbonization of its activities.
On offshore wind, Mr. Berville reaffirmed the goal of 50 wind farms in 2050, stated by Emmanuel Macron, explaining that the state would launch 2 GW of tenders per year, so that 20 GW are awarded by 2030.
