France emissions cuts slow again, climate targets off track
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France has struggled to reduce the energy intensity of politically sensitive or costly sectors such as transportation and refineries.
PHOTO: BLOOMBERG
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PARIS - France’s cuts to greenhouse gas emissions slowed for a second straight year in 2025 and remain well below what is needed to meet its climate goals, according to government-commissioned data published on April 8.
The slowdown comes as other major economies also struggle to make good on their promise to reduce planet-warming emissions, even as global average temperatures hover at near record highs.
France’s emissions declined 1.5 per cent from the previous year, said Citepa, a non-profit organisation tasked by France’s ecology ministry with tallying the country’s greenhouse gas inventory.
“The downward trend in emissions is continuing, albeit at a slower pace,” Citepa said in a statement, but added that the reduction “remains insufficient” to meet France’s 2030 climate targets.
France in December updated its pathway for achieving carbon neutrality by 2050.
To stay on track, greenhouse gas emissions need to fall approximately 4 per cent on average every year until 2030.
After France slashed its output by 3.9 per cent in 2022 and 6.8 per cent in 2023, the rate slowed sharply to 1.8 per cent in 2024.
The final 2025 reduction was revised slightly from Citepa’s provisional estimate of 1.6 per cent in January.
Like other industrialised economies, France has struggled to reduce the energy intensity of politically sensitive or costly sectors such as transportation and refineries.
Emissions from the energy generation rose slightly in 2025, breaking a downward trend observed since 2022, while only small cuts were made in transport.
Ms Anne Bringault, director of programmes at the Climate Action Network (RAC) alliance of environment groups, blamed “setbacks in public policies for ecological transition” for the slowdown in progress in tackling emissions.
Efforts to focus attention on tackling climate change are being overshadowed by wars in the Middle East and Ukraine, a global energy crisis, and growing economic turmoil.
France’s data echoes a slowdown in neighbouring Germany, where emissions fell just 0.1 per cent in 2025, the Agora Energiewende expert group said in March.
Emissions in the United States rose 2.4 per cent in 2025, according to the Rhodium Group think tank, spurred by the world’s biggest economy’s demand for heating and electricity for the AI boom. AFP
