“Limiting the carbon footprint of mobility: what are the right policies for France?”

Wednesday 7 October 2020

Conférence du Forum

In 2019, 30% of greenhouse gas emissions in France came from transport, not counting international routes. Far from being under control, these emissions have continued to rise, unlike those of other economic sectors. When the National Low-Carbon Strategy (or SNBC, for Stratégie Nationale Bas Carbone) was implemented in 2015 to cut (by a factor of 33) transport-related emissions by 2050, the message was: we’re taking note of the problem and ambitiously rising to the challenge. Five years on, can we say that a real “mobility transition” is under way in France? Watch the video presentation of the results.

On October 7, 2020, the Mobile Lives Forum presented the results of the research project “Limiting the carbon footprint of mobility: what are the right policies for France?” launched with Jean-Baptiste Frétigny and his team who conducted the survey over two years. The directors of the Mobile Lives Forum concluded this presentation by proposing four levers to immediately reduce the carbon footprint of mobility in France. Jean-Marc Offner, director of the urban planning agency Bordeaux Aquitaine (a'urba), was invited to introduce the results and question the dogmas and false solutions that, according to him, still govern mobility and planning policies in France.

Find the summary of the research here

1. Introduction: why launch a research project on the French policy for reducing the carbon footprint of mobilities? By Christophe Gay, co-director of the Mobile Lives Forum

2. 2. Questioning dogmas, to think and act differently. By Jean-Marc Offner, Director of the Bordeaux Aquitaine Planning Agency (a'urba)

3. Limiting the carbon footprint of mobility: what are the right policies for France? By Jean-Baptiste Fretigny, Researcher and Lecturer in Geography at the University of Cergy Pontoise

4. Four levers to immediately reduce the carbon footprint of mobility in France. By Christophe Gay and Sylvie Landriève, co-directors of the Mobile Lives Forum

5. Discussions with the audience

Mobility

For the Mobile Lives Forum, mobility is understood as the process of how individuals travel across distances in order to deploy through time and space the activities that make up their lifestyles. These travel practices are embedded in socio-technical systems, produced by transport and communication industries and techniques, and by normative discourses on these practices, with considerable social, environmental and spatial impacts.

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Associated Thematics :

Policies

Jean-Baptiste Frétigny

Geographer

Jean-Baptiste Frétigny is Senior Lecturer in Geography at the University of Cergy-Pontoise. His research concerns the political, social and cultural significance of mobility and public space, from the individual to the global.

Christophe Gay

Mobile Lives Forum's director

Christophe Gay was the Director of the Mobile Lives Forum until 2023. He has combined training in international law (Sceaux), political science (Sorbonne) and psychosociology (Nanterre). After working on the image of big companies and local governments, he was the regional transportation communication director and then headed strategic planning for SNCF communications. An expert in mobility issues, he is behind the creation of the Forum.

Jean-Marc Offner

Urbaniste

An urban planner and policy expert, Jean-Marc Offner is the managing director of a-urba, the urban development agency of Bordeaux Aquitaine, and of the Science Po Urban School. He was previously the director of the Technical, Territorial and Societies Laboratory (LATTS) and, prior to this, was head of the Urban Development-Transport-Environment Department at France’s École des Ponts et Chaussées.

To cite this publication :

Jean-Baptiste Frétigny et Christophe Gay (19 October 2020), « “Limiting the carbon footprint of mobility: what are the right policies for France?” », Préparer la transition mobilitaire. Consulté le 09 May 2025, URL: https://forumviesmobiles.org/en/forum-meetings/13449/limiting-carbon-footprint-mobility-what-are-right-policies-france

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