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By ARTHUR NAZARET
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— Energy and climate: our ranking of the 31 personalities to follow
— The public debate commission, a taste of Le Maire in the mouth
— What the composition of the regional energy committees (CRE) says
Hello everyone, and rest assured, everything is fine. The pilot of this newsletter maintains control of the plane even if, while speaking to you most seriously about the world of regional energy, oil and finance committees, my turbulent colleagues smuggle in references to Children’s songs or Pink Floyd.
Turn on your tablets again and hold on tight for a descent into our ranking of personalities to follow and who, like you, are closely interested in energy and climate.
ENERGY & CLIMATE MORNING ON ITS 31. Are you impatiently awaiting a multi-year energy program? Your newsletter, which is just two weeks old and still has a little milk in the corner of your mouth, offers you another PPE: its Panorama of energetic personalities. After having probed the soil and hearts, checked turbans and turbines, your servants go to coal, ready to get angry by proposing their ranking of the 31 people who count on energy and the climate.
And number one is… At the head of TotalEnergies, Patrick Pouyanné hear moving at your own pace. He touts his company’s record investments in renewable energy and isn’t stopping fodder projects. Through his actions or those he inspires, Patrick Pouyanné is undoubtedly one of the most influential.
Following the podium, a man and a woman in politics. The first, Bruno Le Maire, added an Energy cap on his head following the reshuffle, to even better embody the green reindustrialization that he wants for France. The second, Ursula von der Leyenis putting his position back on the line and hopes, after having succeeded in having his Green Deal accepted in Europe, to be able to supervise its implementation.
31 names in all, with a few parliamentarians, other CEOs, a media engineer, an activist…. Congratulations to them. Criticisms and comments are of course accepted, and will be taken into account for the next ranking.
**Get ready for the next debate in Maastricht, join us and our new candidate Ursula Von der Leyen, President of the European Commission. This edition of the Maastricht Debate is not to be missed, join us online and participate in democracy alongside some of the most influential voices in the EU. Register here.**
From 9:30 a.m., opening of FOWT, an event dedicated to floating offshore wind turbines, at the Palais du Pharo in Marseille.
At 8:30 a.m., presentation of the action plan on simplification by Bruno Le Maire, Minister of the Economy, Stanislas Guerini, Minister of Transformation and the Civil Service and Olivia Grégoire, Minister Delegate to the Minister of the Economy.
At 10 o’clockpresentation of the Simplification bill to the Council of Ministers.
From 9 a.m., continuation of the Building Beyond festival with an intervention by Diane Simiu, director of climate, energy efficiency and air.
At 8:30 p.m., Dinner on financing the ecological transition between Christophe Béchu and economists Selma Mahfouz, Katheline Schubert, Louis-Gaëtan Giraudet, Christian De Perthuis, Christian Gollier, Benoît Leguet, Philippe Aghion and Fanny Henriet.
**Get ready for the next debate in Maastricht, join us and our newly confirmed candidate Ursula Von der Leyen – President of the European Commission. This edition of the Maastricht debate is not to be missed! Join us online and participate in democracy alongside some of the most influential voices in the EU. register here.**
REDUCED FLOW FOR DEBATE. Since Gabriel Attal’s general policy declaration, the National Commission for Public Debate (CNDP) has been in the government’s sights. Today’s presentation of the Simplification bill by the Minister of the Economy Bruno Le Maire will be an opportunity to clip its wings, according to information from my colleague Paul de Villepin.
The industry is over. The measure is not in the text, but will be announced for the occasion. “This will go through the regulatory process,” confirms MP (Renaissance) Louis Margueritte to your newsletter, who is expected to be rapporteur of the text. The objective is to remove industrial projects from the CNDP’s scope of intervention. The subject was decided during an interministerial meeting on Friday.
Total planing. One of the CNDP executives laments on condition of anonymity: “It is a total planing of the CNDP’s field of intervention. No more debates about gigafactories batteries, hydrogen type fuels, mines, logistics warehouses”, adding that major energy projects – the reason for the commission’s existence – are also industrial projects and will also be deprived of debate.
AH THEM CRE, CRE, CRE. All regions, except one, have set up their regional energy committee (CRE), as you described in your newsletter yesterday, in an article on Laurent Wauquiez. These bodies, created by the renewable energy acceleration law, are a space for consultation on the energy mix, and must ensure that local promises match regional objectives.
The composition of the CREs, suggested by decree, is done by mutual agreement between the president of the regional council and the prefect. In addition to local elected officials, there are economic players and figures from civil society. The opportunity for lobbies to be represented. Your newsletter has compiled and then analyzed the composition of all the CREs, to draw up a small ranking of the players currently well retained.
The big mix. At the top of the ranking, the Renewable Energies Union which is present in each CRE, and even has two seats in the Grand-Est and in Nouvelle-Aquitaine. GRDF, RTE, Enedis, EDF and GRTgaz are unsurprisingly well represented by their local managers.
“The regional fact is major for the heat”, explains Pierre de Montlivaut, boss of Fedene, which brings together players in renewable heat, and has mobilized to be present in five CREs. Heating networks are decentralized systems, he added, so it’s “on the ground that it happens”.
On the side of NGOs, it is the France Nature Environnement (FNE) federation which is present in all CREs, followed by UFC-Que Choisir. Local or citizen energy players, such as Shared Energy, are also well represented, and a few seats were granted to Friends of the Earth. National NGOs, poorly organized at the local level, explained to us that they had given way to the FNE on this one.
Anti-wind energy associations have made their mark in Hauts-de-France but also in Center-Val-de-Loire. A seat was offered to Heritage-environment at the great barrage of majority ecologists, by choice of the prefect, according to a person who followed the creation of the Touraine CRE.
MONEY ! It’s a gas. By digging into the 180 billion euros of employee savings funds outstanding, the French NGO Reclaim Finance found oil. Among the 470 funds analyzed in a report unveiled this morning, 84% invest in companies carrying out oil and gas extraction or transportation projects.
“This high percentage highlights the overall absence of policies aimed at no longer investing in oil and gas expansion,” denounces the NGO. Especially since 70% of “sustainable”, “green” or “responsible” funds are exposed to fossil fuel development projects, according to the same report.
Dunce caps. All funds combined, this rate rises to 94% and 78% respectively for the two largest asset managers, Amundi (Crédit agricole) and Natixis Investment Managers (BPCE), which share the two levels of the market.
Or black. TotalEnergies is thus an investment taken : seven out of ten funds have bet on the company even though it is the sixth in the world to develop more oil and gas projects in their portfolio. Engie, which has signed contracts to import American shale gas until 2042, is also present in 30% of the funds.
A gesture to be diverted, estimates Reclaim Finance, which calculates that these 180 billion euros in employee savings would make it possible to meet the investment needs necessary for the decarbonization of the country until 2028.
MAKE ME WANT. To avoid lastingly angering European citizens with the continent’s ecological transition, we must make them want to participate in it. This is, in essence, the argument defended by political science researcher Théodore Tallent in a note published by the Jean-Jaurès Foundation.
“Backlash overrated.” The backlash, or “backlash”, ecological which culminated in France with the farmers’ demonstrations, is “in reality largely overestimated”, he writes in the columns of the social-democratic think-tank. “Quite often, the fundamental error of many policymakers is to understand opposition to certain climate policies as general opposition to climate policy.”
The 12 works. Théodore Tallent puts forward twelve proposals to involve ordinary people and “reconstruct an ecological discourse”. Jumble: highlight the economic and social benefits of the ecological transition, translate climate change into local issues and provide solutions adapted to local contexts, and encourage everyone to “contribute to the height of their responsibility and capabilities” to move towards a “just transition”.
— Faced with French dependence on Russian gas, researcher Phuc-Vinh Nguyen asks in an article published by Les Echos to put words into action.
— Hydrocarbon giant, Norway wants to become the green partner of a Europe which seeks to move away from China. My Brussels colleagues Antonia Zimmermann, Louise Guyot and Varg Folkman spoke with the Norwegian Minister of Energy.
— “climate sports” athletes, whom Reporterre met, are launching a “charter for responsible athletes” and wearing sleeves with colored bands reminiscent of global warming.
A big thank you to our editor Alexandre Léchenet.
Politico
