ENERGY TRANSITION MINISTER. Agnès Pannier-Runacher will be in charge of energy planning. She becomes one of the two delegate ministers in charge of the “planning” of the new government.
[Mis à jour le 20 mai 2022 à 18h50] It’s official ! Agnès Pannier-Runacher becomes the minister in charge of energy planning, as announced by the secretary general of the Elysée Alekis Kohler. Minister Delegate for Industry under the Castex government has a long technical career to his credit. For her part, Amélie de Montchalin will manage ecological planning and territorial cohesion. They will be the delegate ministers in charge of the environment, under the leadership of the Prime Minister, Elisabeth Borne.
Emmanuel Macron repeated it during his campaign: this new five-year term will be that of “renewal”, of the “new method”, in particular with regard to climate objectives. The re-elected Head of State intends to make the “challenge of the century” his political challenge of the mandate, by setting up an ecological transition and an energy transition. The portfolio of ecology is thus remodeled: there will no longer be a Ministry of Ecology as we have known it so far since ecological issues will be placed directly under the supervision of Prime Minister Elisabeth Borne, who was herself a former Minister of Ecological Transition. She will be assisted by two delegate ministers who will be responsible for two separate but linked areas of “ecological planning”. For whoever will receive the energy planning portfolio, the challenge will be daunting: he will have to neither more nor less “make France the first major nation to get out of gas, oil and coal”. How can this goal be achieved? What is the profile of the person who will take the job?
Agnès-Pannier-Runacher therefore takes the reins of energy planning. Until then, Barbara Pompili was in charge of the entire responsibility of Minister for Ecological Transition: she will therefore disappear from the field of vision of the Roquelaure hotel, and her position with her. Who will fill the position of energy planner?
The former Minister Delegate for Industry under the Castex government has a long “technical” career behind her. After beginnings in finance and public assistance, this enarque worked in the administration of the public service, in particular as administrator of the social SAMU of Paris. In 2006, she became deputy director of the Caisse des dépôts et consignations and is in charge of shareholder monitoring of subsidiaries and strategic holdings. She joined the private sector in 2001 with a position of responsibility with the automotive supplier Faurecia Interior Systems. Many senior executive positions in companies followed, with the presidency of the audit committee of the Bourbon group assured from 2010 to 2018 or of the committee of the Elis group.
Between a position at Ashora France and the Grameem Foundation of Crédit Agricole, she made her debut in politics. Little politicized at the time as she had herself confessed, she joined En Marche directly in 2016, thus appearing among the first supporters of Emmanuel Macron. She became party referent for the 16th arrondissement of Paris and was part of the investiture committee of candidates for the legislative elections. Her commitment then earned her access to the high political sphere… She ended her mandates when she became Secretary of State to Bruno Le Maire, Minister of Economy and Finance under the Philippe II government, from October 2018 to July 2020. Then, during the cabinet reshuffle of July 2020, she landed the post of Minister Delegate in charge of Industry, a position she held until the end.
We must go “twice as fast” on these ecological issues with the aim of placing the subject “at the heart of the years to come in France”, assured Emmanuel Macron at the dawn of his re-election. If until now, the Ministry of Ecology was devoted sometimes to the Environment, sometimes to Ecology and Sustainable Development, but also sometimes to the Ministry of Housing, the remodeling soon carried out will redraw the contours of the ministry. The president had detailed his climate objectives during his meeting on April 16 in Marseille, a “green” meeting in which he had made numerous promises. It mainly aims to reduce interministerial discussions around the ecological issue by bringing more cross-functionality in decision-making. He had also declared: “My next Prime Minister will be directly responsible for ecological planning, because this concerns all areas, all sectors, all expenditure, all equipment, all investments, in short all policies, this is not simply a policy, it is the policy of policies, and because it irrefutably demonstrates the importance that we will attach to this fight of the century”.
This new administration is also detailed by the report of France Strategy “Sustainabilities! Orchestrating and planning public action”, published on May 9, after two years of work. He insists on the importance of orchestrating and planning public action so that it becomes “sustainable, systemic and legitimate” but also of “reconciling environmental, social and democratic issues”. Thus, Elisabeth Borne will be responsible for coordinating ecological issues: with a minister delegated to ecological and territorial planning and the other delegated to energy planning, she will centralize decisions. According to the report, this new organization should make it possible to facilitate exchanges between economic sectors, but also to streamline sector agreements so as to make the transition accessible to all.
With the ministry in charge of ecological and territorial planning, whose mission is to organize with local elected officials the environmental transition in each territory, the minister of energy planning will work on this environmental effort. This future role had been detailed by Emmanuel Macron when he was still a candidate for re-election, in particular during the famous meeting of April 16, in Marseille, when he had declared: “The policy to come will be ecological or will not be not”, as reported The world. Making France the first nation to get out of gas, oil and coal was then presented by the Head of State as an achievable objective via the planning of an “energy sobriety strategy, because the energy that pollutes the less is that which is not consumed”. This position with high responsibilities supposes in particular to multiply by ten the power generated thanks to solar energy, to deploy 50 offshore wind farms by 2050, or to start the construction of six new nuclear reactors, which, according to Emmanuel Macron, is “the only energy that does not produce greenhouse gases and does not depend on the weather”.
In addition, one of the pillars of this energy axis is the development of a hydrogen strategy for transport, whether for planes, trains, boats or buses. Hydrogen being produced by electrolysis, the president then candidate had said he wanted to bet on electricity, and in particular on the production of non-carbon electricity by renewable and nuclear. This carbon-free hydrogen should, in the long term, allow French industries to do without fuel oil, natural gas, and all fossil fuels, again according to the forecasts of the Head of State.