France is on track to decarbonize its economy, but its forests and soils aren’t absorbing as much CO2 as expected, barely missing climate targets and struggling to catch up from the previous decade’s lag.
Human activity-related greenhouse gas emissions in France have dropped in nearly all economic sectors (agriculture, transport, industry, etc.), decreasing by 5.8% in 2023 compared to 2022, the Citepa announced Thursday. This organization is responsible for the inventory of French greenhouse gases and revised its estimates published in March.
This figure, celebrated by the government after a 2.7% reduction between 2021 and 2022, was revealed Wednesday by Prime Minister Gabriel Attal during an election rally in Mayenne.
In 2023, France emitted the equivalent of 373 million tons of carbon dioxide (Mt CO2e), “below the minimum record level of 2020” during the significant economic slowdown of the pandemic.
However, this new record isn’t enough: subtracting the CO2 naturally absorbed by forests and soils (called carbon sinks) from French emissions, “the 2019-2023 carbon budget is not met,” warns Citepa. Trees absorb carbon through photosynthesis, storing it in their roots and branches.
Overall, over these five years, France’s net emissions averaged 380 Mt “against a target of 379 Mt, exceeding by 1.4 Mt” (0.4%), the organization reports.
France’s climate roadmap, set by its second National Low Carbon Strategy (SNBC in french) for 2019-2023, aimed to achieve between 40 and 45 Mt of CO2 absorbed by forests and soils by 2030.
But this carbon sink “has significantly reduced” and only absorbed “around 20 Mt CO2 in recent years, primarily due to repeated droughts since 2015, diseases affecting tree mortality rates, and increased wood harvests,” explains Citepa.
And the future is uncertain: according to a recent IGN study, “carbon sequestration in forests continues to erode” in most projections up to 2050. This includes the government achieving its goal of planting a billion trees by 2032.
“If we can’t act on tree mortality or their slower growth due to droughts, the degradation of the carbon sink is also a political choice since the government insists on increasing wood harvests despite all warning signs,” Sylvain Angerand of the association Canopée told AFP.
“This reduction in the carbon sink requires even greater effort in other sectors to achieve carbon neutrality,” Citepa reminds, as the third version of the SNBC, announced as “imminent” for months by the government, is still awaited.
Citepa observes an “unprecedented situation where all major emitting sectors contribute to emission reductions, in a particular context (inflation, nuclear production resumption…) but without a major economic crisis.”
These reductions are “good news,” but “largely due to temporary factors like decreased economic activity, high energy prices, or the restart of nuclear reactors” halted in 2022, Anne Bringault of the Climate Action Network told AFP.
The government “should focus on implementing additional measures to sustain this trajectory, especially in transport, the largest emitting sector where emissions fell by only 3%, and in international air transport, which saw a 16% increase in emissions,” she added.
France, which must align with the European goal of -55% emissions by 2030 compared to 1990, had already failed to meet its first carbon budget (2015-2018) and revised its ambitions downward in 2019.