“It is high time to act to accelerate the monitoring of real energy savings”

Tribune. The post-Covid-19 recovery is green, and that’s great news. Aid for the energy renovation of buildings has been very successful with almost 580,000 applications filed for a year for MaPrimeRénov ‘and we can only be happy about it as there is an urgent need to renovate buildings if we want to fight effectively global warming.

As a reminder, buildings account for almost half of the country’s energy consumption and more than 30% of greenhouse gas emissions. And then energy renovation is a great provider of jobs on a spectrum that goes from the construction materials industry to building craftsmen. Therefore, this acceleration is positive for economic growth and the structuring of new local and non-relocatable sectors.

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Despite these good figures, the data published by the Climate-Energy Observatory show that building emissions are still almost 15% higher than the objectives set and the Court of Auditors, in a flash audit dated early October, points out that the The energy efficiency of the works financed by the aid is not known.

Theoretical energy savings

The observation is there: despite the large budgets devoted to energy renovation – the State spends almost 4 billion euros per year on this subject – the real effectiveness of public policies carried out in the building sector in terms of reducing carbon emissions. greenhouse gas is too little measured.

No doubt the idea that these large budgets help create jobs and lift hundreds of thousands of households out of fuel poverty every year is not for nothing. However, it is becoming important to quickly ensure that one euro spent on the energy renovation of buildings has the maximum impact on reducing the volume of CO.2 issued by our country.

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Almost all the aid scales for energy renovation are based on the achievement of theoretical and not real energy savings. The Environment and Energy Management Agency (Ademe) has clearly defined standard gains by type of work, but these gains are theoretical and are not verified after the work has been carried out in the majority of cases. We are therefore now funding theoretical energy savings that could only have a theoretical impact on the reduction of carbon dioxide emissions.

Changing the paradigm and moving from an obligation of means

It is high time to act to speed up the monitoring of real energy savings in order to best target the large budgets allocated to energy renovation and to maximize their impact. Now that smart meters, Linky in the lead, are deployed over almost the entire territory, it is simply a matter of collecting this data and analyzing it to measure the real efficiency of energy renovation works and their impact on the planet.

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