France’s eco-friendly home renovation scheme again called to question

France’s controversial eco-home renovation scheme, MaPrimeRénov', has come in for fresh criticism with a senate report calling it “too complicated and in need of extra funding”.

The paper was the conclusion of a long enquiry that heard from 174 people.

It recommended more money should be allocated to eco-friendly housing renovations and that the scheme should be made easier to understand. In particular, it said, the conditions and eligibility criteria should be more readable.

Property in France currently represents 28% of the country’s greenhouse gas emissions. MaPrimeRénov' aims to improve this by offering grants to homeowners to make improvements that improve the energy efficiency of their properties.

Senators said France was behind the number of annual home renovations required to meet its low carbon goals.

Around 50,000 to 100,000 renovations are currently carried out each year.

That is less than the objective of 370,000 a year before 2030 and 700,000 per year after that.

The country’s current aim is to reach the Bâtiment bas-carbone (BBC) standard for the entire country by 2050. This would mean that each property has an energy rating of A to B on the current rating system. Currently, only 5% have this.

To achieve this goal, senators recommended the state significantly increase its spending on eco-friendly renovation - although it did not give a precise figure.

“Obviously, there is a cost if we really want to achieve these objectives,” said the president of the senate commission, Dominique Estrosi-Sassone.

She said increasing spending would help create needed jobs.

The report said €4.6billion should be committed to the MaPrimeRénov' scheme annually. The figure for this year was €2.5billion. In June, the government announced a further €300million for the scheme.

Senators also called for an additional €1.5 billion for landlords to help improve the renovation of social housing.

It also warned against the complexity of the MaPrimeRénov' scheme and said that the constant changes being made to it ”leads to a wait-and-see attitude and confusion" among homeowners.

Senators recommended the diagnostic de performance énergétique (energy rating test, DPE) be reformed after changes in 2021 left the tool with problems. A DPE is mandatory for any property that is being rented or sold.

Among its DPE proposals, it said that buildings built before 1948 should be given a special DPE category to reflect their heritage value and that the “bias against” smaller buildings should be corrected to better reflect the buildings’ heat protection status.

The report also called for the financial eligibility thresholds for loans and construction work to be lowered, and for the eco-friendly building sector to receive more support.

MaPrimeRénov' woes

The report marks the latest criticisms of the long-beleaguered scheme.

Some have successfully benefitted from it but hundreds of homeowners this year began to sue France's national housing agency, the Agence nationale pour l’habitat (Anah), over unpaid claims and major delays.

Read more: Hundreds sue over French energy renovation grant delays

Read more: Teething problems for home grant scheme MaPrime Rénov

The majority of the cases are focusing on late unpaid subsidies but some also centre on times when the scheme had promised to subsidise work before later revoking payment.

One of the lawyers for the defendants, from online legal platform justice.cool, has claimed out of the 15,000 MaPrimeRénov' applications their team looked at, 22% were denied payment on “unjustified” grounds. They also found that grants were paid out on average seven months after construction work, as opposed to the promised three weeks.

The lawyer also cited serious “computer malfunctions” and “strong disorganisation” within the scheme, echoing complaints from France’s Defender of Rights over the danger of too much administrative digitisation.

Read more: Foreigners among the losers amid France’s ‘excessive digitisation’

Read more: Digitisation of French public services ‘makes life harder for many’

There are around 3,300 MaPrimeRénov' grants - totalling around €19million in aid - that are yet to be paid according to the justice.cool platform.

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