Planning decarbonization through local resources: the pragmatic turn that France must take
The transition to a low-carbon economy is imperative to mitigate climate change. But it's not just a matter of reducing emission targets: it's also a matter of the physical resources actually available on the territory. This is highlighted by the recent report Water, soil, biomass, energies: Planning decarbonization through local resources published in December 2025 by The Shift Project, a French think tank focused on climate-energy issues.
The challenge? Ensuring that France does not repeat the mistake of a transition driven by abstract objectives, without considering the local material constraints, particularly water, biomass, electricity, and soil — key but limited resources, already subjected to non-energy uses and threatened by climate change.
A continued dependence on fossil fuels... but very disparate across territories
According to the report, at least 45% of final energy consumption per department still relies on fossil fuels. This structural dependence varies greatly from one territory to another: from a department like Lozère with about 1.4 TWh to highly industrialized regions like Bouches-du-Rhône with nearly 55 TWh consumed in fossil energy.
This disparity has two important consequences:
Decarbonization capabilities are not identical everywhere: the available levers (modal shift in transport, electrification, sobriety) differ based on local territorial characteristics;
Shocks to supply or fossil fuel prices do not affect all territories in the same way, which renders transition strategies unequal without appropriate planning.
Increased risks of conflicts over local resource use
The report highlights the expected increase in tensions over several critical resources:
Electricity
The electrification of uses — mobility, heavy industry, relocation — leads to a significant increase in demand. In industrial departments such as Nord, Bouches-du-Rhône, or Moselle, total electricity needs could rise by up to +140% by 2050, which is comparable to several new nuclear reactors in production capacity.
This poses major logistical challenges: strengthening infrastructure, securing the balance of the electrical grid, and arbitrating between competing uses.
Energy wood and biomass
The use of wood as an energy source could increase by +28% by 2030 compared to 2021, intensifying the competition with industrial uses of wood and creating conflicts between territories that have more or less of this resource.
Agricultural biomass
To meet the regulatory ceilings for the incorporation of biofuels (up to 7% of road fuels), it would be necessary to mobilize the equivalent of 7% additional of the national Agricultural Useful Surface (SAU), which is an amount comparable to 80% of the total area of Brittany — a huge challenge if we seek to avoid significant imports and reduce external dependencies.
Soil and land
The artificialization of soils, particularly concentrated on the Atlantic and Mediterranean coasts, increases the pressure on land already contested among agriculture, housing, industry, and energy infrastructures. In the long term, this intensifies competition for available space, essential for both energy production and food or ecological uses.
Climate change amplifies constraints
Beyond the scarcity and unequal distribution of resources, the report highlights that climate change itself alters the conditions of access and availability of these resources.
sea-level rise and the risk of flooding threaten agricultural land and infrastructure in coastal areas;
wildfires, droughts, and extreme weather events influence the ability of forests to produce wood and capture CO₂;
some agricultural soils are becoming less productive or more vulnerable to erosion.
These hazards necessitate integrating safety margins into all planning, rather than relying on static projections.
Two ways to reduce usage conflicts… with very different implications
To mitigate these potential conflicts, the report identifies two main approaches:
Increasing the availability of resources through production or imports may help limit some usage conflicts, but at the cost of increased pressure on infrastructure and heightened dependence on external resources,
Containing the rise in demand through levers of sobriety and efficiency by mobilizing levers of sobriety and efficiency, appears on the contrary to be a more manageable short-term option and more robust in the face of climate uncertainties.
The study highlights that sobriety — particularly energy and land sobriety — must be a strategic pillar, as it allows for the valorization of existing resources without intensifying their exploitation or extraction.
Concrete recommendations from the report
Beyond the diagnosis, The Shift Project sets out several structuring recommendations for effective spatial planning:
affirm the essential but limited nature of local resources and their role in national decarbonization;
recognize that territories contribute differently to transition levers according to their characteristics (climate, demographics, industrialization);
link decarbonization strategies with spatial planning through inter-territorial cooperation;
integrate safety margins in prospective scenarios to account for climate uncertainties;
expand and enrich available territorial data, in order to facilitate precise and comparable diagnostics;
train and raise awareness among elected officials and territorial agents about planning based on local resources
Conclusion: a more realistic and resilient planning
The report from The Shift Project does not invite to give up on decarbonization, but to rethink its framework of action: to move away from a logic of mere national objectives to embrace a planning based on local physical resources, their constraints, and their interactions.
This pragmatic approach is necessary to avoid painful trade-offs and unnecessary economic and social tensions, while ensuring a transition that is both effective and equitable among territories
