France released on Friday a revamped roadmap to become carbon neutral by 2050, with an ambitious plan to phase out oil and gas.
The updated strategy was unveiled on the 10th anniversary of the Paris Agreement, the landmark climate accord designed to cut greenhouse gas emissions and keep global warming well below 2C, with efforts toward 1.5C.
The announcement comes as climate diplomacy faces major challenges, with the COP30 climate summit in Brazil last month concluding without an explicit call to phase out fossil fuels, as sought by the European Union and other countries.
France’s updated National Low-Carbon Strategy (SNBC-3) foresees the end of oil use between 2040 and 2045. Fossil gas would be phased out by 2050.
It also aims to boost electricity’s share of energy consumption to 55 per cent by 2050, up from 37 per cent in 2023, largely through renewables.
While the government released the updated strategy, Greenpeace activists dumped orange paint on the cobblestone roundabout of the Arc de Triomphe, with one protester holding a sign reading “10 years of climate sabotage.”
French public opinion is divided over the radical changes to their lifestyle that are required to achieve carbon neutrality, from reducing meat consumption to buying electric cars and flying less — measures the far-right opposition calls “punitive environmentalism.”
French officials say SNBC-3 is compatible with economic growth.
“It is first and foremost an economic and industrial recovery plan,” Ecological Transition Minister Monique Barbut said to the business newspaper Les Echos.
“This strategy is not a way to dictate lifestyle changes. It focuses on the tools we already have: expanding the use of heat pumps, promoting electric vehicles, and so on,” Barbut said.
“Our goal is to build a social consensus around accessible decarbonization,” she said.
The government hopes 15 per cent of cars will be electric by 2030 and that aeroplanes will be the only mode of transport emitting CO2 in France by 2050.
In agriculture, the strategy calls for shifting diets towards eating more fruits and vegetables while lowering emissions from livestock farming.
The industrial sector’s challenge will be to decarbonize production along with changing consumption patterns to reduce carbon footprints.
