Monique Barbut promises a financing plan for adaptation to climate change by the end of September

Charged at the end of July by Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu to present new measures to “accelerate” the implementation of the National Plan for adaptation to climate change, the Minister of Ecological Transition Monique Barbut promised conclusions on Thursday “by the end of September”, with a five-year financing plan.

Among the options chosen, the minister raised with Les Echos the idea of ​​raising the ceiling of Livret A, from 23,000 to 30,000 euros in order to free up additional financing margins allowing the Caisse des Dépôts to grant long-term loans intended to finance adaptation to climate change. But, the minister stressed, “it is not a tax: it is not a question of asking the French to pay an additional tax”.

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This proposal “was favorably received by the Caisse des Dépôts (...) but has not yet been arbitrated by Matignon, nor approved by Bercy,” specifies the economic daily. “We are not going to endure events, wait for them to arrive to make decisions,” she insisted, calling for “prepare for next summer as if it was going to be the same.”

“We will not have renovated all the schools by next summer”, but “we can at least have shutters and air fans installed there”, indicated Monique Barbut, recognizing “a certain number of situations to which we will have to pay more attention”. “Similarly, we will not have diversified the species of all our forests by the next heatwave. But until then, we can imagine quick solutions to facilitate access for firefighters,” added the minister, promising announcements on this subject in mid-September.

“Hotest summer”

Earlier in the day, the minister indicated that France had experienced its “hottest” summer on record. “We have experienced the hottest summer ever recorded since measurements began in 1900,” announced Monique Barbut, during the presentation of the climate report of the summer, which for meteorologists runs from June to August, at Météo-France headquarters near Paris. The summer was marked by an average temperature over 24 hours of 24.0°C, or +3.6°C compared to the 1991-2020 normals, and ahead of the summers of 2003 and 2022, specifies the public establishment.

France experienced three heat waves, one of which, at the end of June, reached a record intensity and another, from the end of July to August, equaled with 23 days the record for the longest wave ever recorded in France, which dated from 1983. The country also suffered extreme fires during this period, such as the one that devastated part of the Gironde. “At the end of August, forest fires had already burned six times more areas compared to the average of the last twenty years,” underlined Monique Barbut.

Public Health France, for its part, has counted some 7,300 deaths, according to a still provisional assessment of victims of high temperatures this year established as of August 19. “The summer of 2026 will go down in history, but the question we must ask ourselves now is how it will remain so,” underlined Monique Barbut.