“We need a plan”. It is with these words that Jean-Marc Jancovici, president of the Shift Project, began and ended his remarks on February 1 in the amphitheater of Sciences po, rue Saint-Guillaume in Paris. For two years, 200 volunteer members of this think tank specializing in decarbonization issues have been fine-tuning an ambitious plan for the transformation of the French economy (PTEF). This systemic work, broken down into around fifteen sectoral plans, aims to free France from the carbon constraint at the same time as from its dependence on fossil fuels. Urgency of planning, need for chosen sobriety and social justice… the director of the Shift Project, Matthieu Auzanneau, discusses the main lessons of this plan.
L’Express: Stuck between the themes dear to the far right, the question of purchasing power, but also the health crisis, the question of climate change is still struggling to impose itself on the political agenda. Is that the meaning of your approach?
Matthieu Auzanneau: The idea for this project came about at the start of the Covid. There is a clear analogy between the response to the pandemic and the energy transition: it is the need to have a relevant action plan. The world economy is today sick of a double pathology linked to fossil fuels. The first is obviously global warming. The second is the decline already underway in many places on Earth in the extraction of oil and natural gas. Our political leaders must take the measure of the danger. Our window of opportunity has narrowed considerably since the first climate agreements. And yet, I do not feel in this campaign the seriousness of the appointment that we have with History.
Yet we have the impression that politics is taking hold of this question. We no longer count the climate laws, Grenelle of the environment for twenty years.
There is a big method problem. The outbreak of the yellow vests crisis revealed this: the carbon tax is like bloodletting in medicine in the time of Molière. It is the index of an immature thought, of a misunderstanding of the extent of the disease. And naturally, it fails. Oil’s grip on our economies demands broader and more subtle responses than just slapping one more tax on people’s backs. Our main message to the Shift Project is that France needs to define and implement a large-scale plan. The idea of planning had fallen into disuse, yet it made the great hours of the French economy during the post-war boom. In the exchanges we have with employers and unions, we find that this need for a plan is now widely perceived. It’s very new.
The French Economic Transformation Plan (PTEF) published by the Shift Project comes after the publication of those produced by RTE, the Négawatt association, Ademe or even the National Low Carbon Strategy. How is it different?
It is a chance for France to have all these approaches. What distinguishes ours is undoubtedly its systemic nature. Fossil fuels are the lifeblood of the economy. Our challenge consists in modifying the organization of all the vital organs of society, so that they can do without these energies. Electricity production is one of these vital organs, obviously, just like agriculture, transport or industry. We think less about it, but it is also the case for public administrations, culture or health, the latter alone representing no less than 8% of France’s greenhouse gas emissions. In the PTEF, we have endeavored to implement measures to limit the need for energy and materials in around fifteen sectors.
You also insist on the caution that characterizes the PTEF.
Some of the aspects that allow other scenarios to achieve carbon neutrality seem fragile to us. For example, we do not assume future GDP growth. Money is not the decisive resource in this matter. What is decisive is the ability to have adequate natural resources and human skills: this is what we have put at the heart of the analysis. And then there are technical and industrial bets that seem doubtful to us. For example, it seems to us that the ability to develop biogas production and carbon sinks is too often overestimated.
Unlike these scenarios, the heart of your work for a year now also aims to warn about the difficulties in supplying fossil fuels that we are facing.
The world crossed the peak of conventional oil production in 2008: this means that for 80% of the total production of fuels, extractions can only decline. Our work, carried out with the support of the Ministry of the Armed Forces, show that there are high risks of constraints on Europe’s hydrocarbon supplies in the years to come. This is a major misconception of current policies. And this is the second reason, no less serious, to decarbonize the economy. The PTEF proposes to navigate in a zone of caution, because the remedies must not result in needs for metals or cultivable land as problematic as the current needs for fossil fuels.
If we talk about the human and social cost of this transition, the conclusion is that we can decarbonize the economy while creating significant employment. Your assumptions show a positive balance of 300,000 jobs. Isn’t that a bit utopian?
No, but we must name today the winners and losers of a transformation which, unless it is piloted, will be suffered. The subject is not yet taken seriously by the political class. Employees who lose their jobs because of the switch to electric, there are already some in the automotive industry. Where is the blueprint capable of creating effective bridges over an entire generation? In our work, we estimate that nearly 500,000 jobs can be created by 2050 in agriculture, in particular through a return to more local production. This would return to the level of agricultural jobs of the 1990s. There is also a deposit in the bicycle industry, with more than 200,000 jobs to potentially create. These are transformations whose magnitude is in no way a cataclysm. But again, to negotiate the turn, you need a plan. A plan whose development must begin with an adult conversation focusing on the most vulnerable situations: without social justice, nothing good will happen.
The notion of degrowth irrigates the field of political ecology. You don’t mention that term. On the other hand, your plan calls for a very strong dose of sobriety. For example, the reduction in the car fleet, the slowdown in new construction, the production of meat divided by three, short flights prohibited. Isn’t that an unattainable horizon?
The equation cannot be solved without sobriety. We have the impression that this word sobriety has become consensual, but today it is an empty word, few are those who dare to put something behind it. We take a clear position. Getting out of fossil fuels can’t work if you only think in terms of technologies. Our proposal is to organize French society so that it needs less energy and materials. And that’s different from the idea of degrowth.
In many cases, more arms and brains will be needed. Sobriety in the building means more work for the renovation. In agriculture, it’s more work in the fields and on the farm. In industries, it’s more work for repairs, for example. We will no doubt be told that these are arduous jobs. More painful than working in an Amazon warehouse, a call center or even in a real estate agency? Not sure. To integrate the need for organizational sobriety into a political project is to ask ourselves what we want the economy to give us.
Are you going to question the candidates on the basis of this project?
We wrote a letter to most campaign teams. We basically said to them, “We have a plan, what’s yours?” The momentum that France will be able to stimulate over the next five years will be decisive. The path will obviously not be straight, but I think our plan is coherent. It is a toolbox made available to the Republic. We do not pretend to have exhausted the subject, we just pretend to start the conversation on a coherent basis.
Matthieu Auzanneau has been leading the Shift Project since October 2016. A former economy and energy journalist, he has published Black gold. The great history of oil published by La Découverte in 2015.