The purpose is not a new one. Previously, during the Seventies, appeared the need to separate growth, indispensable for guaranteeing employment and the level of life increase, with energy consumption. The two oil shocks had destabilized foreign trades and France, at that time, was not protected by the euro against the speculation caused by its external deficit. Energy supply safety had become a priority, which had lead to the choice in favor of nuclear power production. Today, the stakes are the climate but the objective is the same: it is to reduce greenhouse gas emissions coming from energy consumption, and so, the need to make it falling. The rebound Plans, decided at the national level as at the European one to overcome the consequences of the economic crisis provoked by the covid-19 pandemic put at the State disposal huge financial resources. So it is essential that they are employed and that their utilization leads to expected results.

Almost half of the energy consumption comes, in France, from residential and tertiary sectors, i.e. 46%. Its main component comes from heating and in a lower part from offices air conditioning. This share is relatively stable for ten years. So, there is a obviousness: buildings thermal isolation would allow to reducing energy needs. Works would create activity and jobs on the territory. So growth would be dissociated from energy consumption and would generate lesser and lesser emissions. To incite to the realization of these works would constitute the best possible policy. For decades, the governments worked on doing it. Last announcements in France about the rebound Plan have even made that action one of its first priorities.

Unfortunately, past adopted incentives have not allowed to reaching the expected objectives. The gap even became wider between the place that priority was occupying in the political message and the achieved results on the field. Figures, on this point, are severe. For ten years, the energy consumption share of the residential and tertiary sectors is stable: 29% for the first one and 17% for the second. During that period, average French growth was near 1%. Energy consumption of the residential sector was 41 millions of tons of oil equivalent (toe) in 2010. In 2019, the last published figures, it was 41.2 toes. The level has not been reduced for ten years. The observation is the same for the tertiary sector: energy consumption went from 24 million to 24.1 million toes.

The main cause of this situation lies in the lack of financial return of the investments to do. The leaseholders as the occupying owners have no interest in making these expenditures. The expected profits are not covering, even after a long period of time, the realized savings. The State has only two possibilities: to strongly increase the prices of the different energy sources or to offer efficient and high enough incentives. The first solution is politically impossible. We saw it with the consequences of the announced gasoline prices increases which have provoked the yellow shirts revolt. So it remains to it to finance the full or a part of the works through offering formula adapted to the premises or dwellings various occupation situations. It has the resources because that is a part of the Rebound policy and it even will be a condition to benefit from the forecast funds included in the European plan.

Regarding a part of the tertiary sector, and especially the administrations, the situation could change because, there, the State is in the first line to accomplish the thermal renovation of the buildings it occupies, as these of the multitude of public collectivities to which it could bring its support. But yet, it is necessary they want it. When we see the size of the Paris Town Hall  and the occupied offices by its services, we can ask ourselves if, instead of building ways dedicated to bicycles in Paris, it wouldn’t be more judicious to act to making these buildings less energy consuming.

Regarding habitations, the failure comes from the maladjustment of the proposed incentives to the different status through which they are occupied. When the building is rent, the issue is complex because the one which is supposed to finance the investments will not profit from the result because it is the tenant which will see its bills reduced. Regarding social organisms, the State, with its subventions can take a large part of the costs. It will contribute, along with jobs creation and the reduction of energy consumption, to improve the purchasing power of the tenants. It will also reduce the number of families hurt by energy precariousness. To the opposite, regarding the other owners, whatever they are institutional ones or private persons, the solution must rely more on regulations. The establishment of an Energy Diagnostic must be systematic and no home which hasn’t its one can be offered for rent when there is a new contract. The fulfillment of these obligations must be systematically controlled, which is not the case today. The current bill which is in discussion at the Parliament includes this obligation but only in five to eight years from now. This period is much too long.

The action of the State, under the rebound Plan, must be much more aggressive when the occupant is the proprietary. The level of the contribution much be increased and, especially, no restriction must be introduced in function of that one revenue. We must know what we want and we must not look for two objectives in the same time. Occupants having revenue above the average are consuming more energy. It is them it is necessary to incite to make works with direct subventions or tax incentives. To the difference to highly subsidized electric vehicles which are most of the time imported that, at least, will create jobs.

The diminution of power and fossil fuels bills which will result of the works will offer to the beneficiaries a lasting increase of their purchasing power which will, there too, go in the direction of the growth rebound. Regarding families who have indebted themselves to acquire their homes and who have no possibility to finance isolation works, that augmentation will come to attenuate the weight of their reimbursement charges.

To get significant results, the State must go through two taboos. First, it must not hesitate anymore to directly intervene on buildings it occupies, and act toward local collectivities in order they do the same, and if needed, through financing them. After, it must not anymore condition its supports to the revenue level of interested people. When we want to reach several objectives in the same time, it occurs almost every time that we miss all of them.

Through continuing to maintain high ambitions regarding energy transition without directly investing and without modifying its incentives system, the government takes the risk of a double failure: an economic one with the inefficiency of its rebound Plan and an environmental one with the keeping at their current level of energy consumptions, and so of the greenhouse gas emissions, to the contrary of the message it delivers during political debates or at the occasion of international meetings about climate.