An additional 20 billion euros of public money to win the climate battle: this is what the new French Prime Minister announced this week in his policy speech. We will have to wait until the autumn to have the details of this ecological recovery plan and to know the regulatory and fiscal measures that will be associated with it. Once these are disclosed we will be able to assess the extent to which this package will enable France to catch up in terms of low-carbon mobility, energy efficiency in buildings, or the production of sustainable energy.
At this stage, we can nevertheless welcome the emphasis placed on support for the low-carbon transition sectors. Because - as you will discover in this week's I4CE newsletter and thanks to its "Energy Policy Tracker" – until now, recovery packages in France and in other G20 countries have been given to sectors that consume a lot of fossil fuels.
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Energy Policy Tracker
Since the start of the pandemic, governments around the world have granted massive public aid that will have an impact on the climate. And there is more to come. In order to help you follow these financial commitments in real time, an international consortium of 14 Think Tanks including I4CE has launched the "Energy Policy Tracker" website. It currently covers the G20 countries and tracks the different types of policies: fiscal, monetary, industrial, etc.
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According to the "Energy Policy Tracker", the financial commitments of the G20 countries have so far mainly favoured the consumption and production of fossil fuels up to $151 billion. Aid for energy saving, renewable energies and cycling has reached $89 billion. While Germany and the United Kingdom have spent more on clean energy than on fossil fuels, the opposite is true in France and Australia.
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France: €18bn for fossil fuels energy since the beginning of the crisis
In this blog post, Louise Kessler of I4CE analyses the €18 billion in aid which has been adopted in France and which will go to sectors that consume a lot of fossil fuels. France stands out from the other G20 countries by making a large part of this aid conditional on emissions reductions, but the ambition and the strength of these commitments have been questioned. Only €3 billion of aid has been adopted so far for key sectors of energy transition, in the form of subsidies and public investment.
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