France’s Former Energy Minister on Balancing Ecology and Economy in the Green Transition

Roland Lescure may no longer be France’s energy and industry minister, but the parliament member representing French citizens living in the U.S. and Canada is continuing to fight for policies that balance ecology and the economy. 

Mr. Lescure, now deputy speaker of the French National Assembly, has always believed what he says the U.S. is just starting to acknowledge: that climate change is real, and that government must play a direct role in fostering the clean-energy transition — all without choking out innovation. 

For two years, Mr. Lescure put his parliamentary duties aside to focus on his role within the Ministry of the Economy and Finance, preaching that green growth is not an oxymoron.

This summer, however, he was forced to make his case once again to voters in the 1st District (North America) after President Emmanuel Macron called snap elections to head off the ascent of the far-right National Rally.

The election saw a surge from a new coalition on the left, substantial gains on the far right, and a hung parliament with no majority that required months to form a government.

The gamble didn’t pay off for Mr. Macron’s Ensemble coalition, Mr. Lescure told Global Atlanta in a telephone interview from France. But “it didn’t un-payoff either,” given the far right’s inability to gain a majority despite its earlier strong showing in the European parliamentary elections. 

“People showed they could work together and avoid the worst outcome,” Mr. Lescure said, though he now says the new government has been too accommodating to the far right. 

Unaccustomed to split governments in as in the U.S., France is now in uncharted territory that could threaten its economic progress. 

“France is the only country where they feel they can’t work with people from across the aisle,” Mr. Lescure said. 

Growth, he found while talking to businesses all over the country in his previous role, helps bridge political divides. 

“When you put a factory on the ground that is going to build electric batteries and hire a thousand people, you work with the local elected official, whether the person is left, right or center. What we’ve done in industry we should do for the rest.”

This pragmatism is one reason Mr. Lescure believes his constituents, about a quarter-million French citizens across North America, including in Georgia and the Southeast U.S., gave him another shot after a barnstorming campaign that involved a weeklong tour of seven U.S. and Canadian cities — and a lot of Zoom calls.

Atlanta, which he has visited in the past, had to settle for a virtual call, but Mr. Lescure said he looks forward to connecting with the city on future visits.

Increasingly, Mr. Lescure believes, French citizens abroad want a “coalition of reasonable people” to run his country, eschewing extremes and solving problems. But he’s under no illusions that the French abroad are voting idealistically.

“What you want is your administrative life with France to be simple,” he said of French expatriates, 1.7 million of whom are split into 11 constituencies around the world.

In most cases, Mr. Lescure says, they seek improved services, like passport renewals by mail and the ability to vote electronically instead of showing up in person at a consulate like the one in Atlanta — both of which have been delivered recently.

But Mr. Lescure does feel that his approach as energy and industry minister — balancing the needs of the economy while shepherding the country toward a green transition — are validated by his election victory, a solid 55-45 margin in the second round over the challenger from the left-leaning coalition, the New Popular Front.

“People recognize that I’ve done the job on industry,” he said, noting that, much like in the U.S., a need for both environmental responsibility and industrial resiliency is bringing back factories that many French believed had been lost for good — batteries, electric cars and other energy-intensive sectors.

Five so-called gigafactories for batteries, for instance, have been announced for France in the last two years. The country is also a world leader in artificial intelligence, another industry hungry for power.

France, it turns out, was well positioned in these areas, given its massive generation capacity in nuclear, a carbon-free source of energy that had been in “slow motion” for 15 years but is suddenly back en vogue.

That’s partly due to gas shortages caused by Russia’s war in Ukraine, but also thanks to a recognition that the industries of the future can’t be immediately powered solely by wind and solar alone. France is building six new reactors as part of its “nuclear renaissance,” with plans for more as it eyes a 2050 carbon neutrality goal.

“People are realizing that to really achieve climate change goals without killing the economy is to have some nuclear in the mix,” Mr. Lescure said.

France will be focused on exporting its expertise in the sector, with companies like Orano and Framatome innovating on issues like nuclear waste storage and turbine development, he said.

U.S. Finally ‘Gets It’ on Climate

The U.S., meanwhile, has finally made an overdue entry into the fray on climate and industrial policy under the Biden administration, Mr. Lescure said.

While the Inflation Reduction Act has huge subsidies that many European policy makers see as protectionist, the overall thrust of the law showed that the U.S. was “finally getting it,” Mr. Lescure said.

“For decades there was a lot of talk but not much happening,” he said. “I just thought, ‘Wow, thank God, it’s time.’”

The main issue for democracies managing the energy transition, Mr. Lescure said, is solving the “end of the world, end of the month” dilemma.

Governments may be able to focus on the long-term threat of climate change, but the rank-and-file must focus on paying their bills, and they don’t want to see jobs — or emissions — outsourced to other countries on the way to a transition.

“You’re losing the political acceptability of ecological change,” he said, noting that it’s important to show that not only autocracies have the long-term focus needed to address climate change coherently.

The political cycle is in years, he said, while the “energy cycle is in decades.”

In that regard, France is closely watching the U.S. elections, where a second Trump presidency could jeopardize what Mr. Lescure views as progress on the nexus between climate and industry.

Georgia, a Republican-led state that is also heavily benefiting from the IRA via investments by Korean companies in batteries, solar panels and electric vehicles, could offer a roadmap for balance.

To foster what amounts to a new Industrial Revolution, Mr. Lescure said, governments must help promising yet unprofitable technologies, like steel made with green hydrogen, get to viability.

Eventually, he said, that could mean more investment by French startups and innovators in the United States.

“The U.S. is still the market they will dream of. Once they’ve made it France, the first place they will want to try is the U.S.”