French prime minister Sebastien Lecornu has called for rapid electrification in response to the rise in fossil fuel prices caused by the Middle East war, and unveiled new measures to reach the goal.
"As long as we depend on crude and gas we will continue to pay for others' wars," he said on Friday, 10 April presenting his electrification plan that the government began working on before the Iran crisis.
France will double its annual spending on electrification to €10bn ($11.8bn) from €5.5bn, Lecornu said on 10 April.
For residential heating, gas boilers will be banned in new buildings from the end of the year. Heating systems relying solely on gas were already de facto banned in new builds, and hybrid systems were becoming increasingly less common. The government will also choose 100 local areas to put on a "zero gas" trajectory by 2030. It aims to reduce gas consumption by 85 TWh/yr by 2030, or roughly a quarter of current consumption.
The government wants to install 1mn heat pumps a year by 2030. Sales previously reached this level over 2021-23 before falling back, and French president Emmanuel Macron in 2023 announced a previous target to reach 1mn heat pumps produced in France each year by 2027.
The government also wants two-thirds of new vehicles to be electric by 2030, compared with 28pc in March, a record high. And French manufacturers should build 400,000 EVs a year by 2027, and 1mn by 2030, up from about 200,000 last year. A new subsidised EV leasing scheme covering 50,000 vehicles will be introduced, alongside an existing scheme that leases 50,000 vehicles/yr to people on low incomes.
