“For the past two weeks, Ademe has been on the hunt”worried Marc Fesneau, the boss of MoDem deputies, Wednesday January 15 on France Inter. At a time when the political class is tracking economies, the right has in fact placed the Ecological Transition Agency in its sights. Tuesday, at the National Assembly, the president of the Les Républicains group, Laurent Wauquiez, cited it in a list of agencies whose“questionable usefulness” and the “very real cost”. “Not only are these organizations expensive, but (…) they are at the origin of the standards which exhaust our country and they end up dispossessing politics of decision-making”he said in response to the general policy declaration of Prime Minister François Bayrou.
Before him, the President LR of the Senate, Gérard Larcher, had highlighted Ademe, its “more than 4 billion budget” and his “nearly 1,100 full-time equivalents” when claiming “concrete actions” to reduce public spending, “particularly on state agencies and simplification”Saturday in The Parisian. “The problem is that almost all the projects financed by Ademe are also financed by the Banque des Territoires and by the regions”had asserted the LR president of Ile-de-France, Valérie Pécresse, Monday on France Inter. “That means that there are three administrations working on the same projects, that we are doing the instruction three times”she continued, defending a “suppression” of the agency and the transfer of its budget to the regions.
Speeches which recall the bill tabled in October by the National Rally, considering “in the medium term, to reinternalize, in central administration, the missions of Ademe and to abolish this agency”.
These criticisms targeting the public establishment, placed under the supervision of the Ministry of Ecological Transition in particular, were quickly qualified as “simplistic” by the minister in question, Agnès Pannier-Runacher. “This relentless harassment of public officials who get up every morning for public service is unacceptable”she denounced on social networks. A reaction that echoes that of the agency's employees: “We are each very invested in these subjects! This type of attack is really difficult to live with. It brings discredit, as if colleagues were doing superfluous work”denounced to franceinfo a staff representative of the National Union of the Environment (SNE), which represents public agents working in this field.
“On the contrary, we need Ademe more than ever, in a tense budgetary context. Ecological investment is the best investment there is”commented on LinkedIn the director of the Institute of Economics for the Climate, Benoît Leguet, sharing the IPCC observation that “the cost of action is less important than that of inaction”. “Cutting out Ademe means putting at risk the transition to a carbon-free economy adapted to climate change. To put it differently, giving up our energy security and the resilience of our businesses and our territories”added the one who is one of the agency's administrators.
Decarbonization of industry, deployment of renewable energies, transition to carbon-free mobility, recycling, renovation of buildings… Ademe supports companies, citizens and even communities in reducing greenhouse gas emissions. greenhouse, responsible for global warming. In recent weeks, the State has, for example, launched a public support system for the decarbonization of industry led by Ademe.
“We provide tools and expertise, including 150 researchers and 500 engineers, following a scientific methodology to make the transition”details the CEO of Ademe, Sylvain Waserman, to franceinfo. Environmental expertise widely praised, according to a report from the General Inspectorate of Finance (IGF) dating from April 2023. “The agency is identified by all stakeholders by its expertise and the technical skills of its teams to develop systems contributing to the ecological transition”we can read. A crucial element “in the field of ecological transition, eminently technical, in order to avoid counter-references”.
The agency also highlights the complementarity between the expertise of national teams “who invent the methodologies” and those, regional, “who will deploy them on the ground”describes Sylvain Waserman. “For technical training, the other partners very often rely on Ademe. And generally speaking, we never duplicate”adds the SNE staff representative in response to criticism from Valérie Pécresse. “Yes, we work with many organizations, but the projects are not financed everywhere by the regions or the Banque des Territoires, far from it. This is an untruth.”
Distribute Ademe agents among these other administrations, as proposed by the president of the Ile-de-France region to reduce costs, “wouldn't happen as easily as she suggests”, also slips a union source from the CFDT Ademe to franceinfo, because “Ademe is made up of 98% private law employees and 2% civil servants”.
The figure of four billion euros put forward by Gérard Larcher corresponds well to the forecast budget of 4.2 billion adopted by the agency at the end of 2023 for the year 2024. “No, Ademe does not ‘spend 4 billion euros’”however, insists on X Nicolas Goldberg, energy expert at Colombus Consulting. On the agency's effective budget in 2024, which was 3.4 billion according to its CEO Sylvain Waserman, “92% go directly to the territories and 8% [aux] operating costs, the people who work there, [les] rents, [les] research work”he emphasizes.
The budget therefore mainly includes subsidies paid to other players, such as the 800 million euros from the heat fund, which supports renewable heat production in local communities and businesses. Or “1.7 billion euros” of the France 2030 plan, for which Ademe “inspects the files, enters into contracts, but the State decides what is financed”, underlines Sylvain Waserman.
“We have the impression that these 3.4 billion are money that Ademe spends. This is not the case. Companies have never needed the State as much as they do today “today, in supporting decarbonization. This is true for the territories too.”
Sylvain Waserman, CEO of Ademeat franceinfo
The boss of Ademe, however, understands that his agency attracts attention. “Never has the State's effort on the ecological transition been more important. The Ademe budget, three years ago, was one billion. It is logical that this attracts attention at the moment where public money is very scarce.”
On LinkedIn, Sylvain Waserman ensures that Ademe participated in the overall effort. “We have already planned a significant budgetary effort of -210 million euros, with a reduction of 38% on our equity”he writes. He adds that assessments of Ademe's finances have been carried out. “In April 2024, we had four months of audit from the General Inspectorate of Finance, which declared that Ademe was well managed. It even recommended an increase in staff”he congratulates himself. In its previous report, the IGF already invited “to make Ademe the preferred project owner of aid for the ecological transition of companies”. Against the grain of current criticism. Which subtextly aims at the objective of ecological transition in general, believes the SNE staff representative: “Are we continuing to finance the transition? This is clearly the question.”
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