Soaring energy costs have thrown the once flourishing glass-making industry in France into a crisis, and this has notably hit the small- and medium-sized businesses that account for an important part of its estimated 22,000-strong workforce. As glass-makers report a year-on-year quadrupling of their energy bills amid a parallel economic slowdown, some have been forced to shut down their ovens and to place staff on short-time working, and many now face the chilling prospect of not being able to survive the winter. Mathias Thépot reports.
Technical adjustments were necessary as the single pipeline between the two countries was originally intended only to deliver gas from Germany to France.
The French parliament has approved a ban on oil and gas production beyond 2040 and also an immediate halt to the granting of new fracking or extraction licences on all mainland and overseas French territories, which currently produce a relatively small equivalent of 815,000 tonnes of oil per year.
French ecology minister Nicolas Hulot has presented a draft bill of law to end France's relatively small fossil fuel production by 2040, as part of President Emmanuel Macron’s broader plan to take the lead against climate change, after US counterpart Donald Trump ditched the landmark Paris COP 21 agreement to fight global warming.
