Why a low-carbon transition approach?
Context, objectives and stakes of the low-carbon transition.
Context:
2023 was thehottest year ever recorded. Before it, the period 2015-2022 contained the 8 hottest years ever recorded. The threshold of an average warming of more than 2°C was symbolically crossed in one day in 2023 (for an average warming currently estimated at +1.2°C). Year after year and record after record, global warming and its consequences are becoming ever more intense: unprecedented wildfires in Canada, record heatwave in Brazil with felt temperatures exceeding 55°C, floods in Bangladesh affecting several million people. These consequences do not occur only abroad but are manifesting more strongly year after year in France. The CGDD, in a 2020 publication, highlighted that 6 out of 10 French people are affected by climate risk and that the annual frequency of so-called “very severe” accidents (at least 10 deaths and/or more than €30 million (M€) in damages) has almost quadrupled over the last two decades compared with the previous four.
The 6th Assessment Report (AR6) of the IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change), approved by the 195 UN member states, is the reference on the state of scientific knowledge about the climate. It confirms the conclusions of previous reports: human influence on the climate is unequivocal. The warmest years we have experienced so far will be among the coolest within a generation. Past greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions have caused profound changes in all components of the climate system. Continued emissions worsen the impacts of climate change. Many changes are irreversible on centennial to millennial time scales. The choices and actions implemented during the current decade will therefore have repercussions today and for thousands of years. In the absence of rapid, effective and equitable mitigation and adaptation measures, climate change increasingly threatens ecosystems, biodiversity, livelihoods, health and well-being of present and future generations. Technical, political and societal solutions already exist across all sectors and are well identified.
Framework objectives
At the international level
To address this challenge, theParis Agreement, drafted at the 21st Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (COP21 – UNFCCC), proposes to keep “the increase in global average temperature well below 2°C above pre-industrial levels” and to pursue efforts “to limit the temperature increase to 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels.”
At the European level
The European Green Deal aims for carbon neutrality across Europe by 2050. To make this objective legally binding, the European Climate Law sets a net greenhouse gas emissions reduction target of at least -55% by 2030 compared with 1990 levels.
At the French level
Finally, these framework objectives are implemented in France through the National Low Carbon Strategy (SNBC), which also aims for carbon neutrality by 2050 (which in France implies dividing greenhouse gas emissions on its territory by 6 compared with 1990). It also sets objectives by period (carbon budgets), by sector of activity, as well as objectives to reduce the carbon footprint of the French population and to increase territorial carbon sinks. It is updated periodically depending on the degree of achievement of the initial carbon budgets.
Issues
"We have already reached 1.2 degrees and this trend is accelerating," says the UN Secretary-General in his statement. "Warming has accelerated over recent decades. Every fraction of a degree matters. Greenhouse gas concentrations are at record levels. Extreme weather and climate disasters are becoming more frequent and intense."
António Guterres, 2021, United Nations Secretary-General.
Nearly 10 years after the Paris Agreement, international action is still awaited. Global GHG emissions have still not begun to decline (and are even continuing to increase, albeit at a slower pace) while limiting warming to +2°C would require a reduction in global GHG emissions of 64% by 2050 and 84% to limit warming to +1.5°C. Current public policies worldwide are therefore insufficient and would, without strengthening, lead to a global warming estimated at +3.2°C by 2100. Suffice to say, a catastrophic scenario.
France’s emission reduction targets, although ambitious in their projections (i.e. target of carbon neutrality by 2050 under the inventory approach), were slow to produce initial effects. However, more recently, gross French emissions have indeed decreased. Thus, in 2023 a decrease of 4.8% compared with 2022 was observed, with a reduction in GHG emissions across all main sectors thus allowing, on average, compliance with the SNBC2 objectives over the 2019-2023 period (2nd carbon budget), excluding carbon sinks. These recent dynamics of emission reductions are therefore encouraging (France’s carbon footprint has also been gradually decreasing since the 2010s) but as indicated by the High Council on Climate the decline in gross emissions must still assert its structural character.
✅ The urgency of action to reduce our GHG emissions is therefore more topical than ever and the need to low-carbon transition approaches (that is to say towards a less emitting societal model) now takes on a vital character.
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