In a report published Tuesday, the Action Climate Network and the Veblen Institute make a first assessment of the retraining of employees of the last closed coal power plants to reduce CO₂ emissions. “> By
What future for employees of the sectors whose activity is brought to dry up if France wants to hold its objectives of reduction of emissions of co 2 ?
Conscious that the transition will not be just socially without taking into account this key issue, the twenty-seven associations federated within the Action Climate (RAC) network draw, in a report published Tuesday, September 20 with the Institute Veblen, a first assessment of the support of employees of French coal power plants whose closure was to be completed this year: those of EDF de Cordemais (Loire-Atlantique) and Havre (Seine-Maritime), and Gazelenergie de Gazelenergie Gardanne (Bouches-du-Rhône) and Saint-Avold (Moselle).
“What has been put in place is a bit exceptional. We wanted to know if the result was satisfactory and what lessons from it,” explains Céleste Duriez, climate and employment manager at RAC, who interviewed employees, unions, Operators of the power plants and elected officials of the territories concerned. The report also learns the lessons of the past, from the closure of the mines. Because, he establishes, “even if the ecological transition creates more jobs than it removes from it, closings or deletions of positions for environmental reasons will be led to reproduce”.
different differentities
The closure of the last coal-fired power plants was induced by the energy-climate law adopted in 2019, which, by limiting their annual production, actually acted as you stop. The ecological issue has officially justified job destruction.
Did the support proposed by the State been up to the task? “The social component was taken seriously (…) The approach is the right one, considers the report. However, this support appeared insufficient in several aspects.”
First downside: the calendar provided that the four power plants closed in 2022. Cordemais will finally work until 2024 and a tranche of that of Saint-Avold, arrested in March, will restart the 1 October, due to the energy crisis linked to the Russian invasion in Ukraine. “The ecological imperative is not respected, the climate like employees suffer,” deplore the authors. The uncertainty linked to “stop and go” weighs on the ability of staff to project themselves into a new professional project.
The transition was made in four years. Long for a social plan, but “short on the industrial level”, underlines a sub-prefect in the report. How to find the balance between these different temporalities? These heavy decisions must be further anticipated. And stick to it. “We have a great need for clarity of the political discourse on the trajectory of these emitting industries. We need a clear course,” insists M me Duriez.
You have 50.16% of this article to read. The continuation is reserved for subscribers.