France announces roadmap for transitioning away from fossil fuels

On 28 April 2026, France announced a national roadmap with explicit end‑of-consumption targets for coal (by 2030), oil (by 2045) and fossil gas (by 2050).

The plan positions France among the leading economies to have set out a comprehensive roadmap with explicit timelines for phasing out fossil fuel consumption.

Key takeaways

• On 28 April 2026, France announced a national roadmap for phasing out coal, oil and fossil gas.

• The plan aggregates previously adopted commitments into a single, structured framework, assigning defined timelines and sector-specific objectives, without creating new obligations. 

• The roadmap sets end-of-consumption targets for coal by 2030, for oil by 2045 and for fossil gas by 2050, together with a series of sectoral milestones.

• The French roadmap is an economy‑wide policy instrument that is likely to inform regulatory standards, investment decisions and scrutiny of corporate transition strategies and disclosures in the years to come.

From ambition to trajectory: long-term end-of-consumption targets

In April 2026, France published its roadmap for transitioning away from fossil fuels, setting out how it intends to progressively eliminate fossil fuel consumption from its energy system by 2050.

The roadmap is embedded in France’s broader ecological planning approach and implemented through two principal instruments: the National Low-Carbon Strategy (SNBC) and the Multiannual Energy Planning (PPE) framework.

At the heart of the roadmap are explicit end-of-consumption targets for fossil fuels used for energy purposes:

• Coal (which accounts for less than 1% of France’s final energy consumption, and is mainly used for electricity generation and industry): end of consumption by 2030;

• Oil (which represents 38% of France’s final energy consumption, with transport accounting for approximately two-thirds of its use): end of consumption by 2045;

• Fossil gas (which accounts for 19% of France’s final energy consumption, used largely in industry and buildings): end of consumption by 2050.

Interim milestones aim to reduce the fossil share of final energy consumption to 40% by 2030 and 30% by 2035, on a pathway to carbon neutrality by mid-century.

To support this trajectory, on 23 April 2026, France published a National Plan for the Electrification of End‑Uses, with measures covering transport, buildings, industry and small-scale manufacturing. The plan’s central scenario projects an increase of around 30% in domestic electricity consumption by 2035.

Sectoral shifts that reach beyond energy

Transport and mobility. The roadmap accelerates electrification of road transport, notably targeting two out of three new car sales being electric by 2030, large-scale investment in charging infrastructure and the electrification of heavy goods vehicles. 

Buildings and real assets. Fossil‑based heating is progressively being phased out, with bans on gas boilers in new buildings and a rapid roll-out of heat pumps, alongside wider building renovation and efficiency efforts.

Industry, power and infrastructure. Large‑scale electrification of end‑uses is expected to drive a significant increase in electricity demand. The roadmap combines demand-side measures with plans to expand nuclear capacity through new EPR 2 reactors and life extension of the existing fleet, together with significant expansion of offshore wind (targeting 15 GW by 2035), onshore wind (1.3 GW added annually) and solar photovoltaic capacity (threefold increase by 2035). Hydrogen and biomethane (a sixfold production increase by 2035) are also central to the supply-side strategy. The roadmap also envisages major investment in the electricity grid to accommodate storage, intermittency management and new electricity end-uses including data centres, heat pumps and electric mobility.

What the French roadmap signals

In practice, the roadmap is likely to shape the following: future regulatory standards and prohibitions; the design of public support schemes and incentives; infrastructure planning and permitting decisions; and expectations around corporate transition strategies, disclosures and credibility assessments.

For businesses and investors, this means that decisions taken today — from capital allocation and asset lifecycles to financing structures and disclosures — will increasingly be assessed against their consistency with this trajectory.

As national transition pathways become more granular, they increasingly function as reference points for regulators, investors and courts, particularly where there is a perceived gap between stated ambitions and operational reality.