Three French scientists are calling on the government to create a dedicated public body that would finance disruptive innovations needed to tackle the climate emergency. In an opinion piece published by the French daily Le Monde on November 6, 2026, physicist Lydéric Bocquet, mathematician Yves Laszlo and Greg De Temmerman, director of the Techleap innovation network, argue that the ecological transition cannot rely on incremental improvements alone.
Their central claim is that the transition will require major technological breakthroughs, the kind that existing research funding is poorly equipped to support. The authors contend that France must accept greater risk in its research financing, backing projects whose outcomes are uncertain but whose potential impact could be large. In their view, the way public research money is allocated needs to be rethought from the ground up rather than adjusted at the margins.
The concrete proposal is the creation of a French entity devoted specifically to funding such disruptive innovations. The published excerpt presents the idea as an introduction to the authors' argument, and the full version of their plan has not been made public in the reporting available. Details such as the body's budget, its governance structure and the timeline for setting it up are therefore not yet known.
The piece adds to a wider debate in France about how to direct public investment toward climate solutions and whether existing institutions are suited to bold, long-horizon bets. Its authors position their call as a response to the urgency of the climate situation, arguing that the scale of the challenge justifies a different approach to research funding.