From southern Spain to Ardèche, torrential rains in recent weeks have caused significant human losses and immense material damage. HAS the day before the COP29 kicks off in Azerbaijan, the brutality of these events reminds us that global warming will weigh on the European and French economies. In this context, INSEE calculated the deleterious effects of warming on the French economy and household savings, based on new indicators adjusted for CO2 emissions. This is a “ augmented national accounting ».
An accounting issue
“This is an important project to push the boundaries of national accounting. This is an extension of the national accounts. Synthetic indicators will not replace GDP, but we will take into account negative externalities,” declared the director general of INSEE, Jean-Luc Tavernier, during a press point this Tuesday.
Fifteen years after the submission of the report by economists Stiglitz, Sen and Fitoussi to former President Nicolas Sarkozy, public statistics are trying to better account for the repercussions of human activity on the climate.
It is clear that most of the indicators put forward by economists always focus on gross domestic product (GDP) or growth, without necessarily taking into account the major impacts of activity on nature. Institutions like the Banque de France or the Treasury have certainly started to integrate climate-related indicators into their models, but these developments are very recent.
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7,000 billion euros
Among the striking indicators presented by the institute is, first of all, France's “climate responsibility”. Statisticians have thus calculated the astronomical cost of France's emissions since the industrial era. As a result, it could amount to nearly 7,000 billion euros (6,964 billion euros) in 2023.
This figure includes the total “carbon footprint”. “ This includes foreign emissions induced by French final demand (“imported” emissions), but excludes French emissions responding to final demands from other countries (“exported” emissions). », Underlines the public organization based in Montrouge.
In 2023 alone, the cost of the “carbon footprint” amounted to 113 billion euros. The government can boast of a drop in CO2 emissions since the beginning of the 1990s. On the other hand, it very rarely recalls France's responsibility for the historical accumulation of fossil fuel pollution in the atmosphere.
The dizzying cost of decarbonizing the economy
In its “augmented national accounts”, INSEE also calculated the dizzying cost of decarbonizing the French economy by 2050: 929 billion euros. This envelope considers France's commitments included in its national low carbon strategy (SNBC) to achieve the objective of net zero emissions by 2050.
« These costs being borne publicly or privately, in the form of investment or renunciation of consumption », underline the authors. When presenting their report in 2023, economists Jean Pisani-Ferry and Selma Mafhouz estimated the annual amount of investments to be made at around 70 billion euros per year by 2030. But the budgetary slump of the last two years seriously complicates the executive equation.
Faced with colossal investments, France will have to find means of financing quickly. The upcoming easing of the ECB's monetary policy should breathe new life into households and businesses. But the Barnier government is committed to a restrictive budgetary policy, which is difficult to reconcile with financing the ecological transition.
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In this regard, the severe cuts planned in the Ministry of Ecological Transition have also caused divisions within the executive itself. The Minister of Ecological Transition, Agnès Pannier Runacher, took to the front lines to defend her ministry’s credits. Added to this is the polarization of the “common base” deputies on the taxation of the richest and large companies.
Colossal losses
Carbon emissions also cause colossal losses in the value of market and non-market production. In its study, INSEE calculated that the cumulative cost of damage and mitigation policies amounted to 94 billion euros in 2023.
To arrive at this figure, the institute subtracted from the net domestic product (2,294 billion euros) the 36 billion in damages worldwide linked to French emissions and 57 billion in consumption from the carbon budget (i.e. the emission ceiling authorized each year to limit the rise in temperature). By integrating the impact of warming on mortality and health, this cost could jump to 127 billion euros (+33 billion euros). An amount which risks making Bercy accountants dizzy, currently plunged into a budgetary storm.
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