After the pension reform, this is the government's other major battle: the carbon-free reindustrialization of France. To achieve this, the government presents this Tuesday, in the Council of Ministers, its draft law on green energy.
Tax credit, reduction of authorization periods, turnkey industrial sites... Economy Minister Bruno Le Maire and Industry Minister Roland Lescure will detail the text's flagship measures. The objective: to regain momentum after the difficult pension reform.
Among these measures, the creation of a "green industry tax credit" to attract industrial investment in sectors such as batteries, heat pumps, wind turbines or solar panels. This tax credit will cover 25% to 40% of investments made, taking advantage of a recent relaxation of European state aid rules for green technologies. The government hopes to invest €20 billion by 2030 and create tens of thousands of jobs.
50 turnkey sites
To encourage new industrial sites, the bill also intends to shorten authorization procedures. These will be halved, reaching a maximum of nine months. While land is scarce, one billion euros is planned to "clean up" wasteland, with the objective of preparing 50 pre-developed turnkey sites.
For the time being, the government has not announced an overall amount for this device. According to the Minister of the Economy, it will be decided "project by project". However, the ministry has already announced that it will be compensated by the reduction of "brown" tax loopholes, i.e. the advantages granted in particular to fossil fuels. Decarbonisation subsidies are also planned for existing industries, as well as €700 million for training.
In addition to public funds, the government also intends to mobilize private savings via a new "future climate savings plan" for miners. This savings plan, whose remuneration should be higher than that of the Livret A, will benefit from a guaranteed capital and will be exempt from tax and contributions, with a ceiling of around 23,000 euros.
'The best chances' of a green industry
"We want to give ourselves the best chance of having green industrial sectors on our territory," said Bruno Le Maire. "This is a battle in which no one is giving themselves a gift to attract investment at home, jobs at home, technologies at home," he added, justifying the use of public subsidies to attract projects, such as a ProLogium battery factory in Dunkirk.
The presentation of this bill comes as the head of state has been engaged for several days in a sequence extolling the attractiveness and reindustrialization of the country. The day before, Emmanuel Macron received 200 bosses of foreign multinationals, in Versailles, on the occasion of the Choose France summit.
Read alsoChoose France: batteries, photovoltaic panels... What we know about the €13 billion investment
The executive believes that its policy to reverse half a century of deindustrialization is already beginning to bear fruit. Citing the creation of 200 factories and 80,000 jobs in two years, Bruno Le Maire stressed that "this had not happened for decades in France", Monday on the sidelines of the Choose France summit on French attractiveness. "We now want to accelerate by using (...) climate change as a lever for decarbonisation and reinvestment in France," he added.
