“What Emmanuel Macron is bringing is not just short-term jobs. It’s a real prospect of hope”, greeted Tuesday, November 8 on franceinfo Patrice Vergriete, DVG mayor of Dunkirk, while Emmanuel Macron proposed a decarbonation pact to the industrialists who emit the most CO2 in France, with a doubling of public aid to 10 billion euros. euros in exchange for doubling their efforts in this area. Patrice Vergriete sees in the Head of State’s announcements a “new hope for industrialization” from France. He also pleads for a “collective work” between industrialists.
franceinfo: Are you already working, as a local elected official, on this decarbonization of the industrial site of Dunkirk which brings together several so-called polluting companies?
Patrice Vergriete: CO2 emitters does not necessarily mean pollutants. We have been working on it for a very long time, since 2015. With industrialists, we wanted to come together, political actors, economic actors, to tell ourselves that to reindustrialize France, and in particular the Dunkirk basin. We had to look to the future, we had to try to anticipate the issues that were going to be the most important for tomorrow’s industry.
“These issues are obviously to respect the environment more, and the climate crisis, therefore the decarbonization of industry. We are setting up a laboratory for industrial decarbonization.”
Patrice Vergriete, DVG Mayor of Dunkirkat franceinfo
We are also the most emitting site in France. We also have this responsibility to be ahead of others. And it is now bearing fruit. We are seeing both emerging sectors arriving in Dunkirk, in particular electric batteries, and major CO2 emitting sites such as ArcelorMittal experiencing a real revolution in industrial production processes.
The industrial site in Dunkirk is one of the largest emitters in France. How do you reduce CO2 emissions?
There are several things that need to be put in place. First, there is work by the manufacturers themselves who must succeed in developing their production process so that it emits less CO2. But there is also collective work to be done. For example, when Verkor came to settle in Dunkirk, it was interested in having the least carbon-intensive batteries in the world. And to do that, you need carbon-free heat. How do we make carbon-free heat? By recovering it from neighboring industries. So by acting collectively, by ensuring that the resource that a company no longer wants can be used as a positive resource for another company, this ultimately allows for more efficiency in terms of CO2. And there are plenty of other examples of this nature that allow an industrial area to become a much less CO2 emitter.
Does it provide jobs for Dunkirk and its region?
It is above all the new hope of industrialization. For 30 years in France, we abandoned our industry, we abandoned the industrial basins, we left them to their fate. You have to be very clear about that. And there, I see with Emmanuel Macron a new industrial ambition by looking to the future, by looking at the industry which will be competitive in the next 20 or 30 years. What Emmanuel Macron is providing is not just short-term jobs. This is a real prospect of hope.
The Dunkirk industrial basin has lost jobs for almost 30 years in a row. And here we are going through an extraordinary period where we are told about 16,000 jobs will be created in the Dunkirk basin in the next five years, thanks to this bet on decarbonization, because we have succeeded to reindustrialize the country. These are also issues of sovereignty. Emmanuel Macron said it, it also allows you to have control of a certain number of essential goods. I remind you that during the health crisis, we no longer produced masks, no more paracetamol in France. We realized that we had perhaps gone a little too far in the deindustrialization of the country.