France is on "the right track" to reduce carbon emissions but needs to vastly speed up its efforts, a yearly report by the High Council for Climate (HCC) has found. The independent group is tasked with monitoring France's climate policies.
The HCC's 235-page report, published Thursday, worries about the implementation of government measures aimed at fighting climate change.
The 12 climate experts who sit on the council found that French carbon emissions dropped by 5.8 percent last year – or by 22.8 million tons compared to 2022.
The result means that France is on track to reduce emissions by 55 percent by the year 2030.
"The speed of France's decarbonisation is for the first time expected to meet its 2030 climate targets," council chairperson Corinne Le Quéré said.
'Not enough'
However the report cautioned that France could do much better.
The gains are "fragile" given the planet is increasingly facing heatwaves, droughts, forest fires and deadly floods, aggravated by a general global rise in temperature, the report said.
With Europe warming twice as fast as the rest of the world, climate uncertainties were intensifying more rapidly than the means implemented to decrease their impact, it added.
Lack of coherence
If France wants to achieve its goal of carbon neutrality by 2050, the HCC said the government needed to "speed up the pace" of implementing climate-related measures.
This included the electrification of cars, with companies advised to "meet their obligations" to transform their fleets from combustion-based to green vehicles.
The HCC noted a "lack of coherence" in French agricultural policy for reducing greenhouse emissions and a "setback in climate action" over the past year.
"Farmers are not sufficiently supported to produce in a more carbon-efficient manner," Le Quéré said.
"The livestock recovery plan, for instance, does not mention any measures to reduce emissions from cattle."
The HCC was created by French President Emmanuel Macron in 2019.
