Evaluability of the French low-carbon transition strategy

National strategies for low-carbon transition are increasing in number and receiving more and more political attention. They constitute crucial public policies to plan climate change mitigation efforts worldwide. Therefore, evaluating their impacts is fundamental to informing public decisions. Because these public actions are noticeably complex and related to transversal transformations in society, their evaluations face specific problems of evaluability. This thesis develops an evaluability assessment (EA) of the French low-carbon strategy (SNBC) to discuss these issues by following the EA model of Davies. First, a theory of change is constructed and focused on SNBC’s governance orientations. Then, an evaluability assessment framework is developed to make it transferrable to any SNBC’s orientation. Applying this framework to governance orientations shows that they are affected by significant evaluability issues. Notably, the rationale of these orientations is ambivalent, decontextualised, depoliticised, and not supported by evidence from the scientific literature. Alignment and additionality of governance objectives in local climate plans are also poorly ensured, which is detrimental to their aggregation for evaluating the success of SNBC’s governance orientations. Besides, information availability on governance orientation’s impact is limited because of unconstructed indicators and a lack of baselines, particularly on territorial governance modes. Finally, changes in governance orientations and monitoring systems are not justified, which limits the assessment of stakeholders’ quality of approach to learning. Based on this EA, recommendations are produced to improve the evaluability of SNBC’s governance orientations and propose implementing specific evaluation methods and approaches on the SNBC in the future. These findings appear to be coherent with most evaluability issues identified in sustainability-related programmes or interventions. Some others seem related to the specific characteristics of the SNBC, and further research appears to be needed to consolidate these particular conclusions.