Grandstand. War in Ukraine, IPCC report [Groupe d’experts intergouvernemental sur l’évolution du climat], soaring energy prices: recent events underline the extent of our dependence on fossil fuels. Beyond the initiatives that we are going to take in the service of energy sovereignty, the main response remains the reduction of our consumption. However, to achieve this, lowering the heating or relying on the mild spring weather alone will not be enough.
We will have to do more, and quickly, to achieve a lasting solution with the concrete tools we have today. It starts with us, in our homes. The observation is well known: housing is the leading energy consumption item in France, half of these dwellings are heated by gas or fuel oil, and our country has 4.8 million “thermal sieves”. This energy and climate failure is double of a social injustice: the majority of these colanders are held by modest and elderly households. In total, more than twelve million French people are already struggling to keep warm. More and more of them will give it up as the energy crisis progresses.
However, the solution is obvious: these dwellings must be rehabilitated, but it is expensive, and most owners cannot borrow to carry out the work. However, to renovate massively, it is necessary to finance massively while protecting the most precarious and the balance of public finances, the recourse to the subsidy cannot be the only answer.
Climate Justice Tool
Solving this equation took time, but today we have the hope of achieving it. At the end of a collective work with representatives of citizens, elected officials from all sides, bankers, companies in the energy and renovation sector, we have found an ecologically relevant, socially fair and financially efficient solution. : the “renovation advance loan”.
This new device – already distributed by two major French banking networks [le Crédit mutuel et La Banque postale] – makes it possible to have an advance to carry out thermal renovation work and to reimburse the bank only when the accommodation is sold, with the proceeds of the sale. By limiting the owner’s expenses to interest only, the renovation advance loan makes thermal renovation accessible to the most modest households and those hardest hit by the energy crisis. It is a tool for climate and social justice.
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