Julia GRIMAULT
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Julia GRIMAULT

Team Lead – Forest-based sector, Carbon certification

Julia works as project manager on the contribution of forests to climate change mitigation.

 

She joined the team in 2014 to take over the coordination of the “Carbon Forest and Wood Club”, which brings together public and private decision-makers and academic research with the objective of sharing knowledge on technical means and economic incentives to strengthen the role of the forest-based sector in climate change mitigation.

 

She has also worked on forest carbon accounting and carbon certification mechanisms (monitoring, reporting, verification), especially through the coordination of the VOCAL project forest pillar and the contribution to the creation of the French “Low-Carbon Standard”.

 

Before joining I4CE, Julia worked at the General Direction for Energy and Climate of the Ministry of Ecological and Solidarity Transition on forest carbon accounting under the Kyoto Protocol.

 

She has graduated from management school (Audencia) and also holds a master’s degree in geography (territorial policies and sustainable development), where she has focused on agricultural and forestry issues.

Team
Last contributions
  • 15/03/2024 Foreword of the week

    Certification framework: the devil is in the details

    A few days after the conclusion of negotiations on the European Union's carbon removals certification Framework (CRCF), I4CE helped organise the European Carbon Farming Summit in Valencia, as part of the CREDIBLE project. The high level of stakeholder participation at the summit testifies to the expectations that this new tool will contribute to a better economic valuation of carbon farming practices. The summit raised high hopes for improving and harmonising carbon measurement to certify projects, in particular through remote sensing, in a sector where there is a great deal of uncertainty. While it is vital to improve measurement and monitoring, uncertainty must not be allowed to justify inaction, and the key is to find the right balance between cost and accuracy.
  • 29/02/2024 Blog post

    European certification framework: a high-quality outline that does not guarantee the value of the final picture

    The European co-legislators have just reached an agreement on the content of the future European Carbon Removal Certification Framework (CRCF). Negotiations were swift and fruitful, against a backdrop of a general step back in the adoption of the various Green Deal texts. While today sees environmental issues played off against farmer's livelihoods, this draft regulation brings these two elements together to create the conditions for investment in the transition of agriculture and forestry sectors. However, several details still need to be clarified to ensure that this framework actually enables effective and ambitious climate financing.
  • 30/10/2023 Foreword of the week

    Wood industry: What are European countries doing?

    Year after year, France becomes aware of the drastic deterioration in the carbon sink of its forests. Tree mortality increases sharply with droughts and health crises. Yet France needs this carbon sink to achieve its climate objectives and needs to preserve it by improving the resilience of its forests, but also - and this is less obvious - by making the best possible use of the harvested wood from the forests. France's climate strategy is counting heavily on maximising the carbon sink in wood products, i.e. making greater use of the wood harvested to manufacture long-lasting products, particularly in the construction industry. Some products store carbon over the long term, and are not only those that we imagine at first glance, as we showed in a previous study. 
  • 27/10/2023 Climate Report

    Developing long-life wood uses: a look at the German, Romanian and Swedish industries

    Achieving carbon neutrality will require the redirection of harvested wood towards long-life uses. To achieve carbon neutrality, France is relying on its carbon sink to balance residual emissions in 2050. A smaller carbon sink would require even greater emissions reductions from other sectors (transport, agriculture, industry, etc.), sectors in which France is already calling for drastic sixfold cuts between 1990 and 2050. In a context where the carbon sink in ecosystems is already falling sharply due to an increase in tree mortality, preserving this sink and developing carbon storage in wood products must be a major concern of the national climate policy.
  • 24/03/2023 Foreword of the week

    International Day of Forests: carbon certification, adaptation and carbon sink

    This week, for the International Day of Forests, I4CE offers you an overview of the forestry issues that are being debated in France and in Brussels. In our newsletter, you will discover a new blog post by Julia Grimault on European carbon certification and our latest analyses on the adaptation of French forests to climate change, the French carbon sink and the wood industry. 
  • 21/03/2023 Op-ed

    European Carbon Certification: the unlikely alliance

    The future European carbon certification framework is under intense debate. The first meeting of the expert group in charge of supporting the Commission has raised criticisms on the composition and mandate of this group, and the discussions have taken an unexpected turn by achieving the feat of bringing NGOs and CO2 Capture and Storage (CCS) industrialists to an agreement against natural carbon sinks, those of our forests or our agricultural soils. Where does this unlikely alliance come from?
  • 08/09/2022 Climate Report

    Adapting French forests: investing wisely

    L’adaptation de la forêt française aux changements climatique devient un enjeu politique important. D’une part parce que, de sécheresses en incendies, les conséquences de l’évolution du climat sur les peuplements sont de plus en plus visibles. D’autres part parce que son adaptation est une condition indispensable pour que la forêt joue le rôle central que l’on attend d’elle dans l’atténuation du changement climatique.
  • 08/07/2022 Climate Report

    Recommendations for the European Carbon Certification Framework

    To achieve the climate goals of the UE, The European Commission wants to create a carbon certification framework to encourage carbon storage in the land sector. The challenge is to develop a common and harmonised framework at the European level by better relying on the expertise acquired through existing certification frameworks. With this study, I4CE propose 7 recommendations, inspired by both our concrete experience with the French Label Bas-Carbone to which we have contributed, and by 15 years of research on carbon certification.
  • 28/06/2022 Climate Report

    Changing wood use to improve carbon storage: which products should be the short-term focus?

    In addition to debates about the right level of wood harvesting, another issue is equally crucial from a climate point of view: what is the best way to use the harvested wood? France’s long-term strategy, the Stratégie nationale bas-carbone (SNBC), calls for an increasing proportion of wood to be directed towards long-life wood products such as those used in construction, which store carbon for long periods. The aim is to redirect part of the resources currently dedicated to shorter uses, such as paper and energy production, towards these longer-lasting uses. While the objectives are very ambitious, the strategy does not come with the policies needed to achieve them. I4CE has therefore assessed the technical feasibility of redirection of the wood use, and has identified the most promising production chains of long-wood products.
  • 11/02/2022 Climate Report

    Carbon sinks: is France’s ambition realistic?

    The French National Low-Carbon Strategy (SNBC) aims at doubling the volume of CO2 removals thanks to the contribution of the forest-based sector, the agricultural sector and the geological carbon capture and storage technologies. The projections concerning these compartments and the underlying technical assumptions have been explored and compared to the existing literature in an in-depth analysis, with the goal of clarifying the challenges and conditions for this massive increase in carbon removals. The conclusions are that far-reaching changes are required in the different sectors and that some objectives for the forest-based sector may be impossible to achieve.
  • 30/12/2019 Climate Report

    Domestic carbon standards in Europe

    In a general context of higher carbon prices and with a growing interest from companies to finance local emissions reductions projects, several European countries have started developing their own domestic carbon certification standards since the early 2010s. This study provides an overview of existing standards and of the obstacles they must overcome, as well as […]

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