four climate action plans – Liberation
Valérie Quiniou is executive director of forecasting and research at Ademe. He interprets the perspective analyzes created by his agency for “Libé”.
From December 2nd to 4th, at the Center Pompidou, three days of debates and exchanges to question the links between the ecological transition and the cultural transition. Find forums and articles thematic file dedicated to the event.
“Climate, what culture for what future?” in Boburg this weekend. As part of the forum (of which Libé is a partner), various meetings will be held around the scenarios developed for France by the Development and Energy Management Agency (Ademe) until 2050. A special edition of the magazine at the beginning of the year Growth restrictions, for the 50th anniversary of the Meadows report (1). A beautiful clash of eras. What have we been doing for fifty years? What will happen to us in less than half a century? Valérie Quiniou from Ademe, comments for He was released prospective analyzes compiled by his agency.
“The starting point is the four scenarios published in mid-2019. This follows the Paris Agreement’s goal of achieving carbon neutrality by 2050 and aligning France’s roadmap to that goal. We should also provide food for thought as part of the work to renew France’s low carbon strategy. Finally, it was about shedding light on the debates before the presidential elections so that these scenarios could be used. However, the “focus” was not on the weight of energy in our lifestyles, but rather on the mix of electricity. The debate was also polarized on the binary opposition between nuclear power and pro-wind power, which was somewhat caricatured.
“Our goal was to show the complexity of uses in our lifestyle. All human activities require certain resources, metals and materials, land, etc. has implications that must be considered as its use. We are inspired by the IPCC scenarios and the more or less rapid “1.5 degree rate”. braking curves for our emissions, trajectories of contrasting socio-economic patterns… In the end, we focused on using three levers: vigilance, energy efficiency and decarbonisation.
“The first scenario reminds us of this ‘thrifty generation’ with great restraint. It reduces our energy consumption as quickly as possible under pressure. For housing, it is a matter of large-scale renovation of the existing stock to achieve high energy performance. Vacant residences also become primary residences. In terms of mobility, the number of kilometers traveled per person is reduced by a third. We make more trips on foot or by bike, and of course we develop the area for this. As for food, meat consumption in France is limited by dividing it into three. We consume more organics by reducing the share of chemical fertilizers that release a lot of greenhouse gases. Finally, employment policies encourage remote working or coworking.
“For Scenario 2, we are less restrictive and more complacent, but we achieve our reduction in energy consumption less quickly and act less quickly. Meat consumption has halved. We’re doing a massive but more progressive overhaul to accommodate household wallets. Kilometers decreased, but only by 17%. We develop medium-sized cities, which allow services and jobs to be closer to residences, and activities to be better distributed across the territory. We are starting to reoccupy vacant lots, turning second homes into primary homes. We share places like laundry, during the day the office rooms become a place of relaxation in the evening… We are optimizing the existing building.
“Now let’s look at the 3rd scenario. We leverage energy and decarbonize through technologies. As for the living space, rather than renovating, the apartment is demolished and rebuilt. Therefore, we abandon thermal filters to create a living environment with better environmental standards. There are some concerns about the materials used for this reconstruction: so we have to use a circular economy, reuse deconstructed materials for reconstruction. Mobility continues to grow, we will develop rail transport, long-distance TGV lines, clean mobility…
“Finally, scenario 4. We’re close to the ‘trend’ scenario, which means we continue today’s trends and then look at carbon footprints. We change our consumption little, but we try to compensate for the negative effects. We optimize food industry processes, synthetic proteins. We continue to build new things: the dream is always to buy a private house. This is carbon-free mobility, an electric vehicle. The only solution is to try to capture the emitted CO2 by all possible means. This is the most risky scenario because it is based on technologies that are not yet proven, and we will not achieve carbon neutrality with this. But we wanted to determine what measures could be taken.
“We see that young people (students and high school students) look at our scenario 4 and say: “You propose this! Even if they are technology consumers themselves. We feel a strong appetite for the most sober scenarios with collaboration and sharing. Political science students created a blog called “Immersion-Transition 2050” based on our scenarios. They prepared four synopses with illustrations and offered to vote for the best ones. The French are clearly ready for an environmental transition, but expect strong state intervention and are committed to social justice. Eco-concern is understandable because we are not going fast enough and these are long-term goals. But despite the challenges COPs face, action must be taken. We may lose a little, but we must remain optimistic enough, we must show that we have everything in our hands to succeed.
(1) Rue de l’échiquier, 488 pp., €14.90.
