France woos US climate scientists
President Emmanuel Macron plans to award multiyear grants for several US-based scientists to relocate to France, his office said on Monday, the eve of a climate summit he is hosting to raise finances to counter global warming.
Macron unveiled the “Make our Planet Great Again” grants after President Trump in June said he was pulling the United States out of an international accord to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions that was brokered in Paris in 2015.
Macron repeatedly tried to persuade Trump to reverse his decision. In a statement, the Elysée Palace said 13 of the initial 18 grants will be awarded to scientists based in the United States.
“You will now settle in, develop projects, enrich French, European research, because we’ve de- cided to give even bigger resources and to fully recognize what you are doing,” Macron said in a speech at Station F, a start-up incubator in Paris.
Macron was addressing the winners of the grants, some of whom attended his speech. Princeton, Stanford and Harvard were among those universities from which the winning researchers were selected, the presidency said.
French state-controlled utility EDF on Monday said it would invest $29.4 billion euros to develop 30 gigawatts of solar capacity in France between 2020 an 2035. The newspaper Les Echos quoted the CEO of the utility Engie, Isabelle Kocher, as saying her company would invest $1.2 billion to improve the energy efficiency of buildings.
Separately, nine European energy companies said they would include green bonds in their financing policies.
Developing nations say that the rich are not on track with a broader commitment in the Paris accord for wealthy economies to provide $100 billion a year by 2020 to help poorer countries switch from fossil fuels to greener energy sources and adapt to the effects of climate change.
Oxfam said recent estimates showed the cost of helping emerging nations deal with rising sea levels, droughts, flooding and other effects of global warming could add up to $300 billion per year by 2030.