By Forrest Crellin
PARIS (Reuters) – Funding to combat climate change needs to come from the private sector as there is no more public financing available from France or other European Union countries, French Finance Minister Bruno le Maire said on Tuesday.
“We cannot afford to have such a level of public debt. So don’t count on more public effort or public funding,” he told a conference of the International Energy Agency.
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Le Maire said France was already investing some 40 billion euros ($42.85 billion) per year to fight climate change by deploying renewable energies and investing in new technologies and new nuclear plants.
“I can tell you that there is no possibility for us to put much more money on the table. And all the 27 (EU) member states are in exactly the same situation because we had to spend so much public money to limit the consequences of the COVID crisis,” he said.
Private institutions and banks will need incentives to accelerate the green energy transition and funding needs to also come at the EU level, he said, calling for a Capital Market Union (CMU) to be set up.
A CMU would make it easier for start-ups to access a wider and less cumbersome pool of cash to fund renewable projects, decarbonisation, and other climate-related activities, he said.
($1 = 0.9335 euros)
(Reporting by Forrest Crellin and Benjamin Mallet; editing by Gareth Jones and Mark Heinrich)
