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French voters have elected a climate hawk as their next president.

Former investment banker Emmanuel Macron is on his way to winning a landslide over anti-immigration populist Marine Le Pen.

Early returns show Macron with nearly two-third of the votes in the second and final round of the French presidential contest.

The Carbon Brief website highlighted Macron's environmental policies in a Jocelyn Timperley article entitled "French election 2017: Where the candidates stand on energy and climate change".

Macron has reportedly promised that his party, En Marche!, "will make implementation of the Paris Agreement a priority of our international action".

In the past, he has even raised the prospect of EU sanctions against countries that withdraw from the December 2015 accord.

"However, this appears to have now been softened to apply only to the environmental clauses of trade treaties," Timperley wrote.

The Paris agreement calls for all industrialized nations to transition from fossil fuels to 100 percent renewable energy by 2050.

Macron has promised to double France's solar-power and wind-power capacity in five years and he plans to ban exploration of shale gas in France. In addition, he has pledged to shut down all coal-power stations by 2022.

Macron speaks fluent English, which increases the likelihood of his views being aired on English-language broadcasts around the world.