Charlotte VAILLES

The ecological transition can only happen if all households have access to solutions – public transport, electric vehicles, home insulation, heating upgrades, etc. The issue of the access to transition solutions is therefore crucial for climate policies. Special attention should be paid to low- and middle-income households, as the necessary investments may not be sustainable for them. 

The issue of access to the transition for all households, in particular, for low- and middle-income households, has become central to the French public debate, as recently shown by the French President’s speech on ecological planning, when he referred to “an ecology that is accessible and fair, that leaves no one without a solution”. This growing awareness is particularly in response to the yellow vests protests: expecting households to take steps towards the transition if they have no access to solutions (electric cars, public transport, home insulation, heating upgrades) results in a rejection of transition policies and leads us collectively to a dead end

The IPCC scenarios are constantly cited when we are interested in climate and its evolution, but sometimes wrongly, and often without a clear understanding of what they imply. On the occasion of the release of the latest IPCC report, in which five new scenarios have appeared, Charlotte Vailles of  I4CE explains how they were constructed and what information is available about them. 

Since 2018, and under the initiative of the NGFS, the network of central banks and supervisors for greening the financial system, several central banks and supervisors have begun to conduct their first climate stress test exercises to determine the vulnerability of financial institutions to climate-related risks. In order to help central banks to carry out this type of exercise, the NGFS published in 2020, its first guide to climate scenarios analysis that can be used in climate stress tests.