It is a 128-page document published on the occasion of the Bercy meetings devoted this Tuesday to the theme “Growth and climate”. According to a report from the General Directorate of the Treasury, the energy transition will cause a loss of 13 billion euros in state revenue by 2030, in taxes on fuels, and 30 billion by 2050.
The exit from fossil fuels implies a reduction in taxes on these energies: with unchanged taxation, they could erode, according to this interim report of the study on “the economic issues of the transition towards carbon neutrality” which it will publish in 2024. As the newspaper recalls The echoestaxes levied on fossil fuels brought in 33 billion euros to the State in 2019.
These figures are part of the scenario of global warming limited to 1.5°, for which France and the European Union have made commitments to reduce their net greenhouse gas emissions by 55% in 2030. compared to 1990, and carbon neutrality in 2050.
More than 100 billion additional per year for decarbonization projects
The report observes that the Scandinavian countries, whose electrification of the vehicle fleet began earlier, are already facing this phenomenon of revenue erosion. The authors of the report point out that “several European countries are responding by mobilizing more other sources of revenue within the road sector” such as urban tolls or reducing subsidies for electric vehicles as their purchase price falls.
Furthermore, the report estimates that an additional 110 billion euros per year (gross, compared to 2021) in private and public investments will be necessary for decarbonization projects. It does not yet have an estimate for 2050. At the same time, investments unfavorable to the climate could be reduced, by 37 billion per year in 2030 for example, thanks to the rise in electric vehicles and efforts towards sobriety.
Despite these costs, the Treasury management recalls “that in the long term, the transition will be beneficial to the economy and well-being” compared to the status quo, and it very strongly encourages strong anticipation of the measures to be taken.
“The ecological transition is an absolute necessity, because global warming represents an immediate threat,” Bruno Le Maire also insisted when presenting these Bercy meetings to the press, reports The echoes. The Minister of the Economy will initiate consultations with the economic sectors likely to be affected on adaptation to global warming, on which a national plan must be presented by the end of the year as part of the planning ecological, under the aegis of Matignon.
The Bercy meetings bring together several ministers this Tuesday at the Ministry of the Economy and Finance, Bruno Le Maire, Agnès Pannier-Runacher (Energy Transition) and Christophe Béchu (Ecological Transition) with experts such as Bill Gates, co-president of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, or Jean Pisani-Ferry, co-author of a report on “the economic impacts of climate action”.