The China Mail - France updates net-zero plan, with fossil fuel phaseout

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 percent by 2050, up from 37 percent 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 and economic and industrial recovery plan," Ecological Transition Minister Monique Barbut told 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 decarbonisation," she said.

The government hopes 15 percent 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 decarbonise production along with changing consumption patterns to reduce carbon footprints.

C.Smith--ThChM