Canfin-Zaouati report: a French and green version of the Juncker plan

  • January 29, 2019
Pascal Canfin, CEO of WWF-France and Philippe Zaouati, Chair of Finance for Tomorrow and CEO of Mirova delivered the "Canfin-Zaouati Report" on Friday 14 December, jointly commissioned in June by the French Economy and Finance Ministry and the Ministry for the Ecological and Solidarity Transition as part of the work of the AcTE Commission (Accelerator of the Ecological Transition).

As Nicolas Hulot acknowledged in his resignation speech, France is failing to meet its commitments to reduce CO2 emissions under the Paris Agreement. We therefore need to invest more in ecological transition solutions. For this to happen, the authors of the report, prepared with support from ADEME, recommends the creation of France Transition, a mechanism to activate EUR 10 billion of investment in the ecological transition – such as home insulation, agri-ecology and methanisation – by developing mechanisms for sharing the risks.

Effectively, it is a French version of the green Juncker Plan with massive leverage: the report shows that each euro of budget spending would generate EUR 20 of green investment in areas where it is desperately needed.

  • Recommendation 1: put together, in a single body, a public investment team focused on the energy and ecological transition, by creating "France Transition";
  • Recommendation 2: develop a doctrine for the use of public-private financial instruments for risk-sharing;
  • Recommendation 3: concentrate the actions of France Transition on rolling out transition and creating an initial budget of a EUR 1 billion to generate EUR 10 billion of private investment over three years;
  • Recommendation 4: optimise the actions of France Transition in coherence and coordination with the European Union and the planned Invest EU programme;
  • Recommendation 5: create the conditions for better collaboration between public and private sectors in financing the Ecological Transition.
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