“This is the first large-scale study carried out in France on the real effectiveness energy renovations. And its results are a very pleasant surprise”welcomes Jacques Baudrier, deputy mayor of Paris (French Communist Party), responsible for housing.
The study published on Tuesday, March 5, by the Atelier Parisien d’urbanisme (APUR) association has the advantage of being based on real energy consumption data for housing, recently made available by statistical services. of the State for each address in the territory. This makes it possible to precisely measure the impact of the first renovations carried out in Paris as part of the “climate plan” of the socialist municipality, whereas only their theoretical impact was until now calculated, based on the specificities of the housing and the actions of renovation planned.
Around 9,000 social housing units benefited from these renovations, delivered between 2012 and 2020. On average, their energy consumption decreased by 28% between the three years preceding the work and the years following it (except year n + 1, considered unrepresentative). And even 30% if we compare the period before the work to the year 2022 alone, where the rise in prices and the fear of shortages favored energy sobriety.
These results vary depending on the energy used. Dwellings with collective urban heating saw their consumption reduced by 18%, but by 25% if we refer only to 2022 data, which “give an overview of the possible gains by regulating better”, estimate APUR experts. The reduction after work reaches 25% for homes heated collectively with gas, 28% for individual gas heating and 31% in the case of individual electric heating.
This work made it possible to avoid consuming 20,500 megawatt hours of energy each year, and to avoid the emission of 3,700 tonnes of CO₂. Households, for their part, saved on average 250 to 400 euros each year, depending on the heating energy used. Jacques Baudrier is also delighted “that unlike studies carried out abroad, we do not observe a rebound effect”. That is to say that households heated individually did not return to their previous consumption after some time, to gain heat and comfort.
“Rebound effect”
This study thus contrasts with the work with much more pessimistic conclusions published in recent years. In 2018, American economist Michael Greenstone evaluated the largest residential energy efficiency program in the United States, in Michigan, and had a significant impact. In France, this study was notably cited by the Nobel Prize winner in economics Esther Duflo. “Energy expenditure is indeed falling, but much less than expected: by barely 20%, summarized the Franco-American economist during a lecture given at the Collège de France in January 2023. When you apply it to a household’s electricity bill, it’s really not much, and in any case it’s less than the investment costs. under construction.
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