The president of the French Republic has warned his ministers: their next holidays will be limited to the strict minimum because the program of the government is so dense. That recommendation applies to the minister in charge of the ecological transition, Nicolas Hulot. He reminded it to him when he received him this week at the Elysée palace. To take into account environment is not only political stakes, it is an essential factor of the transformation of the society which will affect everybody’s behaviors, like, sixty years ago, holidays generalization, most of the time by the sea. It is what wanted to show Jacques Tati, in his movie Mister Hulot’s Holidays when he took his inspiration for his central figure from the grandfather of the current minister.    

Nicolas Hulot will have to accept to change his role. Time of speeches without any immediate consequences to support noble causes is over. The president of the Republic asks him to go to practical applications and to decisions which must put a frame on public policies in order to modify everyone behaviors. Road is long to get there, when we look at the minister’s first declarations, regarding the end, around 2040, of petrol and diesel powered cars, the modification of the power mix, the reduction of nuclear power-generation share along with the closure of many plants and, on the short term, the end of fiscal incentives in favor of diesel. But most of these proposals lack of realism and don’t take into account an essential issue: the distinction between the negative consequences for the future of the planet of CO2 emissions which are measured at a global level and the negative consequences for health of particles emissions which have a local impact. France as well is exemplary regarding CO2 emissions, due in particular to nuclear power, but has poor results regarding particles emissions because of its addiction to diesel. The confusion between these two types of blows to environment reached to the disastrous decisions taken during the “Grenelle de l’Environnement” in 2007, with the support of the Nicolas Hulot-Foundation. It consisted, under the pretext that diesel engines rejected less CO2 than gasoline, to increase fiscal incentives in favor of them, when they polluted our cities and provoked respiratory diseases. So when he announces today the convergence between gasoline and diesel prices, the minister is not doing the same mistakes than his predecessors and is going in the right direction.

But the prohibition, around 2040, of gasoline and diesel-powered vehicles is too far away to lead to concrete decisions, except through an increase of incentives paid by taxpayers in favor of electric cars. To make a bet about the fact that these vehicles will have, at that time, the required technical qualities is far from being a done deal. Everything depends from the capacity of the batteries to store enough power to increase the autonomy of the vehicles and of the power of the recharging points to refill them quickly enough. It is difficult to imagine that a family accepts to stand in line during several hours on a highway station before starting again to reach their holiday location. Related technologies, like chemical or materials, unlike for instance information treatment and transmission, have a slow evolution. These doubts are today obvious when you look at the lack of success of electric cars, despite the high level of incentives, and the quasi-impossibility to resale them. That proposal has caught imaginations, attracted the interest of the media but has very few chances to arouse a change in behaviors and to bring an answer to the challenges we have to cope with.

The second major proposal of the minister is about the closing of nuclear power plants around 2025, whose number could reach 17. He moderated later his declaration but the damage has been done because he did not proposed alternative solutions. Who will produce power to replace them? Last winter experience shows that renewable are unable to do it because consumption peaks occur during that period when there is few sun and cold waves come when there is no wind. If the solution consists in building many gas-powered plants, it is difficult to see the interest: in that case, France would do the same than Germany and would increase its CO2 emissions, in contradiction with the principles of the Paris Agreement which, rightly, the minister has committed himself to respect. As a matter of fact, Nicolas Hulot doesn’t seem to have completely assessed the inconsistency of the energy transition law. It fixes a ceiling to nuclear plants production capacity. To put into service new power plants leads to the closure of others it is not interesting to modernize. And, anyway, plants which do not comply with safety conditions determined by the Nuclear Safety Authority, which is the unique institution which is competent on these matters, have to be closed. But the energy transition law fixes a 50% ratio for nuclear production share around 2025, which is in contradiction with the ceiling regarding capacities the same law has introduced. What would happen if, during a cold winter, the 50% ratio was reached and the other sources were unable to produce power? Would we have to cut electricity for the families who couldn’t get enough heat or to the enterprises which couldn’t anymore produce and would have to lay off their workers? Or would we encourage them to get generating units? This is absurd. And what about France power exports, which represent about 10 to 15% of the production, depending of the years? Do we have to renounce to them and denounce supply contracts with our neighbors? Nicolas Hulot would usefully go deeply into these issues and propose less radical interpretations of the law than these he outlined in his first public declarations.

Last inconsistency, there is no references about pollution generated by trucks. The coming back of the “Ecotaxe” is impossible to imagine, even if its abandon was an absurd decision both about environment and public finances. Let’s have a dream. Forty years ago, France, with its high-speed tracks, has known how to revolutionize rail travels. Like all the things which are successful, we like to criticize them. But it is not in attacking our successes that we will correct our failures. So what about putting into practice the same kind of revolution for commodities and goods transportation? This one has known a dramatic transformation with containers which are massively coming into our harbors. They are unloaded and stored automatically before being transferred to trucks. Then they travel across the country. Instead of that, it could be possible to put them on dedicated tracks especially built for that purpose on pylons, equipped with conveyor belts. Containers would be dispatched towards platforms where they would be distributed to trucks for their final deliveries. A pilot track could be built to test the project, for instance between Le Havre and the Paris area. As a coincidence, the former mayor of this important harbor is now the chief of the government. Its financing could be provided thanks to the abandon of the Seine-Nord waterway project whose main beneficiaries are Anvers and Rotterdam harbors. As another coincidence, the Prime minister did express his opposition to that project when it was proposed. So, Nicolas Hulot has many subjects to think about during his holidays. Let’s hope that, as his grandfather in Jacques Tati's movie, he knows how to take advantage of the period.