• The first assessment of the “France Relance” plan was published on Tuesday.

  • The committee in charge of this assessment focused in particular on energy renovation plans.

  • Speed ​​and quantity have been prioritized, to the detriment of expected gains.

For the government, it is time to take stock. After its reform on the taxation of capital examined a few weeks ago, it was the turn of the “France Relance” plan to be scrutinized on Tuesday by an independent evaluation committee. Composed of elected officials, representatives of employers and unions, but also senior officials, it had the difficult task of estimating the effects of this envelope of 100 billion euros announced by Emmanuel Macron in July 2020.

A very tight timing which makes the committee say that “at this stage, the evaluation can only be partial and provisional.

The plan's implementation phase has not yet been completed.

A delay will be necessary to assess the impact of the measures, particularly those giving rise to investments or works ”.

This is particularly the case for everything relating to energy renovation, whether private housing or public buildings.

Incomplete objectives

Despite this methodological limitation, the committee managed to draw up an initial assessment of this axis of the “France Relance” plan.

Two objectives were planned: to reduce the energy consumption of buildings (and therefore the emission of greenhouse gases) and to improve the comfort of resident households.

Problem: “These different objectives were not specified by quantitative targets.

It is therefore difficult to assess their impact, ”regrets the committee.

According to him, “the need for speed (…) has not necessarily led to support the most efficient projects from the point of view of long-term energy savings”.

Very modest energy gains

Illustration with work in private housing, facilitated by the “My Rénov premium” system. The latter has been in existence since early 2020 and has benefited from additional funding with “France Relance”. At first glance, it is a real success. More than 550,000 applications for subsidies to renovate housing have already been validated. Most of them also concern households with modest incomes. "MaPrimeRénov would thus be on the way to reaching 700,000 validated files from 2021, a target initially set for 2022", notes the committee.

Not bad then.

However, this bonus "is essentially not conditional on the achievement of energy gain objectives".

For the moment, these would be very modest: “the energy gain relating to validated works is estimated (…) at 1.7 TWh / year”, which represents “0.4% of the energy consumption of main residences in France in 2019 ”.

A very minimal reduction, which can be explained by the fact that the works financed are often “single actions” (insulation of the attic, changing windows, etc.) and not overall renovations, which are much more efficient.

Relaunch the building

The committee reads the same for the renovation of public buildings. As part of the recovery plan, 4,214 projects were selected, for a total amount of 2.8 billion euros. "The system financed a wide range of works without necessarily prioritizing the most efficient actions, since the projects were selected on the basis of a set of criteria of which the announced energy performance only represented a part".

Indeed, the executive wanted the renovation work to be completed by the end of 2023 at the latest. energy gains.

The evaluation of the “France Relance” plan is not finished: the committee will publish an update next year, with new objectives analyzed, such as support for the purchase of clean vehicles.

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