Carbon Sequestration in France: The High Council for Climate Sounds the Alarm

On June 29, the High Council for Climate[1] published its latest annual report, “Moving Beyond Findings: Implementing Solutions,” which warns that France is falling behind in the area of carbon sequestration.

Carbon sinks: a key factor in achieving carbon neutrality

As key drivers for achieving carbon neutrality, the forestry and wood sector and land use are major pillars of the National Low-Carbon Strategy (SNBC), which has set ambitious goals for France in this area: absorb 40 million metric tons of CO2 per year within the country by 2030, and approximately 80 MtCO2 by 2050, compared with 14 MtCO2 in 2020^[2]. This strategy, which is intended to enable France to balance emissions and carbon sinks within its borders by 2050, relies in particular on the amount of carbon captured by farmland and pastures (-19 MtCO2 per year, or +1% per year), and on the use of wood as a substitute for other materials and products (-21 MtCO2/year, or +6%/year compared to 2015) – carbon remains sequestered within the lumber throughout the product’s lifespan; The value proposition of wood products is thus to avoid the emissions generated by the materials that wood replaces, while maintaining the total stock of sequestered carbon.

France Is Falling Behind on the Goals Set in the National Low-Carbon Strategy

In its report, however, the High Council for Climate warns that France is falling behind on the targets it set for itself under the National Climate and Energy Plan (SNBC)—a delay that is all the more concerning given that the carbon budget established for the 2015–2018 period has already been exceeded^[3] : “In 2020, the national greenhouse gas emissions inventory compiled by CITEPA quantified the contribution of LULUCF^[4] "at -14 Mt CO2-eq, compared with the -38 Mt CO2-eq figure used in the SNBC2"^[5].

This observation is largely due to the “collapse”^[6] forest wells, whose storage capacity has “decreased by 48% [compared to] 2010”^[7]due to adecline in organic production, a higher mortality rate (droughts, storms, fires, bark beetle infestations), and an increase in levies (50.1 Mm3 per year between 2011 and 2019, compared with 42.4 during the 2005–2013 period). However, this increase in logging does not translate into increased stockpiles of wood products, with a capacity of 0.8 MtCO2e in 2020, compared with 3.4 MtCO2e in 2010: the increase in the volume of timber sold between 2014 and 2019 was thus largely driven by production for energy purposes (+3.4% per year, compared with an average of +0.3% across all sectors)^[8]. In addition to the forestry and wood industry, the High Council for Climate also notes in its report a significant decrease in the storage capacity of grasslands (8.3 MtCO2e in 2020, compared with 9.7 MtCO2e in 2010) due to land-use changes to cropland or soil tillage.

The Need for Ambitious Public Policies to Improve Well Resilience

Against a backdrop of climate change and the collapse of biodiversity—which threatens to further undermine the region’s carbon storage capacity (as the recent wildfires in Gironde sadly remind us)— the deterioration of carbon sinks that has been underway in France for the past decade calls for greater vigilance and public policies commensurate with the challenges at hand, taking into account both carbon-related imperatives and biodiversity issues (also mentioned in the SNBC): the efforts required to achieve our goals will undoubtedly be greater than initially anticipated and must begin immediately. Certain initiatives, such as the Assises du bois et de la forêt, contribute to this goal but remain insufficient: despite the 1.4 billion euro investment committed on that occasion, only 0.3% of metropolitan forest cover will be covered by the measures. The prominent role assigned to wood products (nearly 30% of the carbon sinks in the forestry and wood sector by 2050) must also be accompanied by a voluntary industry-wide policy based on “massive investments in processing plants,” and on a shift in usage, prioritizing the use of harvested wood for lumber rather than for energy purposes, as noted in the report prepared by I4CE in February 2022^[9]. If this fails, the focus on wood products—which assumes an increase in harvests—would only serve to undermine biological carbon sequestration.

The agricultural sector also holds one of the keys to achieving the goals set by the SNBC: as a historical net emitter, it must contribute to carbon neutrality by cutting its emissions roughly in half by 2050 and nearly doubling the volume of greenhouse gases which it sets aside. Its success depends on the preservation of grasslands (less plowing, planting hedgerows) and the development of agroforestry.

The wide range of challenges associated with carbon sinks (climate, biodiversity, the economy, land-use planning, etc.) makes managing them both difficult and crucial: monitoring the goals set in this area must therefore be given greater attention, lest the necessary efforts be postponed even further into the coming years.