France's new fossil-fuel roadmap aims to accelerate net zero commitments with sector-specific milestones

France has turned its fossil-fuel exit into a more coherent policy package, publishing a roadmap that gathers existing climate and energy measures under one umbrella and gives them a clearer sequence through to mid-century. The document does not add a wholly new set of pledges so much as tighten the framing around commitments already embedded in the country’s carbon-neutrality strategy and energy planning.

At its core, the roadmap reinforces France’s long-standing objective of reaching net zero by 2050, while translating that ambition into sector-by-sector milestones. Coal use is slated to end by 2030, oil by 2045 and natural gas by 2050. The government is also restating its intent to close the last two coal-fired power stations by 2027, a symbolic and practical marker of a system that is still heavily reliant on fossil imports for transport, heating and parts of industry.

The policy architecture rests mainly on two established frameworks: the National Low-Carbon Strategy, which sets France’s emissions trajectory across the economy, and the Multiannual Energy Plan, which maps the transition in supply and demand. By bringing them together, Paris is trying to make the transition more legible for investors, local authorities and industrial users who need a clearer view of where the market is heading.

That clarity matters because fossil fuels still dominate French final energy use. Government data puts their share at just under 60% in 2023, with oil alone accounting for the biggest slice, followed by natural gas and a now-minimal coal footprint. Fossil fuels also remain responsible for about two-thirds of greenhouse gas emissions. The dependency is not only a climate issue but an industrial and strategic one, given the country’s exposure to imported hydrocarbons.

Transport is the most immediate pressure point. Because oil is used overwhelmingly in mobility, the roadmap puts electrification at the centre of demand reduction. France wants electric vehicles to represent 66% of new car sales by 2030, while also expanding charging networks and accelerating the shift of buses and heavy-duty vehicles. Public transport use is expected to rise sharply as well, reflecting a wider effort to reduce private car dependence in urban and peri-urban areas.

Buildings are the other major battleground, particularly for gas. The government plans to ban the installation of gas boilers in new residential and commercial buildings from the end of 2026, a step that French media reported in April and which is now embedded in the broader transition narrative. Alongside that, Paris wants to install around one million heat pumps a year by 2030 and push deeper energy renovation across the housing stock. Officials say that by 2030 roughly 85 terawatt-hours of gas demand could be displaced by domestic energy sources, equivalent to about a fifth of current gas imports.

The supply side is moving too. France already benefits from a low-carbon electricity mix thanks to nuclear power, and the roadmap leans on that advantage while scaling renewables. The government wants offshore wind capacity to reach 15 gigawatts by 2035, annual onshore wind additions to continue at pace, and solar photovoltaic capacity to triple over the same period. It also wants to expand biomethane production, deploy up to 8GW of electrolysers for green hydrogen and double biofuel use by 2035.

For industrial decarbonisation, the message is that electrification, molecule switching and efficiency will all be needed at once. The roadmap’s emphasis on domestic energy production is also intended to reduce exposure to volatile global fuel markets, a point that has gained urgency since the energy shocks of recent years and the renewed debate in Europe over energy sovereignty.

The challenge is that progress has been uneven. France has cut emissions by roughly 35% from 1990 levels, but recent declines have slowed. National and European data show emissions at around 376 million tonnes of CO2 equivalent in 2023, easing further in 2024 and then only modestly again in early estimates for 2025. That is still not fast enough for France to stay comfortably on track for its 2030 goals, particularly in transport, buildings and agriculture, where abatement is proving harder and more expensive.

There are signs of broader environmental gains. Air quality has improved, protected areas now cover more than 31% of the territory and waste generation per person has fallen over the past decade. But the energy transition itself remains incomplete. Renewables still account for a relatively modest share of final energy consumption, below the 2030 target, and sectors such as recycling and organic farming are lagging.

That gap between planning and delivery is why the roadmap has prompted mixed reactions. Climate campaigners welcomed the fact that France has finally set out more explicit deadlines for fossil-fuel reduction, but some groups warned that the package is still too heavily dependent on existing policies rather than fresh acceleration measures. For industry, the key question is whether this newly unified framework will speed permitting, investment and infrastructure build-out quickly enough to change emissions trajectories before the end of the decade.

For now, the roadmap’s main value is that it turns a dispersed set of climate commitments into a more readable transition plan. Whether it becomes a genuine industrial roadmap for decarbonisation will depend less on the document itself than on execution in power, buildings, transport and the hard-to-abate sectors that still rely on fossil energy.