Source: French to English Tester Published on: 2026-05-18
Source: The Conversation – France (in French)– By Sylvain Bessonneau, Building Engineer on the observation of the Ecological Transition of the sector, Ademe (Agency for the Ecological Transition)
The Agency for Ecological Transition, or Ademe, launched in 2025 an observatory for the ecological transition of buildings, named BâtiZoom. Its role is to aggregate and monitor over time data on the various dimensions of the environmental impact of the French building stock: energy consumption, greenhouse gas emissions, waste production, air quality, soil artificialization… The levers that make it possible to reduce these impacts, such as energy renovation, decarbonization, sobriety, material circularity, etc., are also monitored.
Ademe also published, at the end of 2025, a barometer specifically concerning the year 2024, which allows for an assessment. What are the main lessons? Interview with Sylvain Bessonneau, head ofthe BâtiZoom observatorywithin the building department of Ademe.
The Conversation France: What weight does the French real estate market have in the country’s environmental footprint?
Sylvain Bessonneau:The real estate stock considered by BâtiZoom includes the residential and tertiary stock, thus excluding agricultural and industrial buildings. At the national level, the residential and tertiary stocks cover an area of4,200 million square meters, of which 77% are devoted to housing. These two sectors account for 45% of total French energy consumption, divided between 30% for residential and 15% for tertiary.
One spontaneously thinks of the energy used for heating in winter or the operation of air conditioning in summer, but this impact is not limited to the energy consumed during the operational phase. Thelatest figures from 2019on greenhouse gas emissions from the building sector, across its entire value chain, show that the use of buildings is indeed responsible for about 67% of total emissions, but that construction and renovation – which are also sources of waste and land artificialization – account for the remaining 33%.
CSTB/Ademe
In this context, theenergy renovationconstitutes a central lever. However, it is appropriate to act on other levers, for example by producing housing capacities through new initiatives, such as combating under-occupation of housing, pooling uses, etc.
The entire residential park indeed has,10% of holiday homes,8% of vacant housingand56% of under-occupied buildingsrelative to their surface area. The mobilization of these levers constitutes an opportunity to meet the needs for housing and office spaces while respecting environmental objectives.
Why is there an urgency to reduce this environmental impact in the future?
H.S.:The stakes are numerous. First and foremost, greenhouse gas emissions caused by human activities, including those from the building sector, lead to an unprecedented scale of climate change that threatens the sustainability of our modern societies. To limit this disruption, it is essential to achieve long-term emission reduction targets, which the project ofthird National Low Carbon Strategy, submitted for public consultation at the end of 2025, confirmed.
It is also an adaptation challenge: climate change is already causing increasing risks of damage to buildings, linked todroughts, heat waves andfloodsincreasingly intense and frequent.
In February 2026, storms Nils and Pedro caused major flooding in France. Damage to property is estimated at 1.2 billion euros. In this context, the president of France Assureurs also called for “collective mobilization in flood prevention so that all stakeholders prepare to face natural events that are both more frequent and more intense due to climate disruption.”
There is also a social necessity to contain the energy consumption of our building stock: between 2021 and 2024, the price of energy soared, with an increase for households of 45% for electricity and 70% for gas. This has driven up theenergy insecurity, and recalls the urgency of giving the French the means to control their energy bill.
The last issue, finally, is geopolitical. The reduction in energy and material consumption as well as their decarbonization would help limit our dependence on fossil energy producing countries and reduce our vulnerability to price fluctuations.
Also to read:
Why the price of gasoline at the pump does not drop as quickly as it rises
What levers do we have to make progress, and what regulations to mobilize them?
S. B. :France has four major levers to reduce the footprint of our real estate portfolio and has equipped itself with a set of ambitious, comprehensive, and complementary regulatory instruments to utilize them.
The first to activate is thesobriety, both at the level of usage – based on the adoption of eco-friendly actions, likely to reduce overall energy consumption by about 10% – and at the level of optimizing the occupancy of the existing fleet, by mobilizing the vacant portion and reducing under-occupation.
The second lever is energy efficiency, which relies in part on energy renovation, both in residential and tertiary sectors. Ademe estimates that, to meet our climate goals, 80 to 90% of homes should have aenergy performance diagnosis (EPD) A and Bby 2050, which implies a rate of about onemillion of efficient renovations per year. Thenational low-carbon strategy (SNBC) 3in consultation proposes an alternative scenario more focused on the electrification of housing through heat pumps.
For the tertiary sector, the trajectory of reduced energy consumption relies on the mechanismEco Tertiary Energy, regulation that sets consumption reduction targets for 2030, 2040, and 2050 for owners and occupants.
On the construction side, the sector is progressing and producing new buildings that are more energy-efficient and emit less greenhouse gases. These developments are notably the result of the application of theEnvironmental Regulation RE2020, an ambitious regulation on new construction with progressive requirements, which leads the sector to gradually evolve its practices.
The third lever concerns waste reduction. It involves decreasing production and encouraging the recycling of materials and products in the sector, within a circular economy approach. This is framed by theextended producer responsibility (EPR) “Building products and materials”, which sets targets for the collection and processing of construction waste.
This EPR allows the financing of operators for the collection, sorting, and processing of waste. This funding enables the free uptake of sorted waste for construction companies, thereby encouraging sorting at the source.
Also to read:
Reuse of materials: Why is it so complicated in building?
What role can the electrification of uses play? How to decarbonize energy consumption in buildings?
H.S.:The decarbonization of energy constitutes the fourth essential lever. In 2025, according to provisional data, 33% of the building’s energy consumption came from fossil fuels, mainly gas for heating. The development of heating networks, primarily powered by renewable energies, is one of the solutions to promote.
In parallel, the electrification of uses, alongside the installation of more efficient equipment, is indispensable. A recent measurement campaign notably showed that theactual performance of air/water heat pumpsmeet expectations, with a performance coefficient close to 3, which means that for 1 kilowatt-hour (kWh) of electricity consumed, 3 kWh of heat are produced.
How has the footprint of the real estate park evolved over the past five years and how to analyze these developments?
H.E. Mr. :The French real estate market has experienced asignificant decrease in its energy consumption between 2021 and 2023, notably due to sobriety measures taken during this period in response to rising energy prices. For some households, these sobriety measures resulted in restrictions, leading to a shift into energy poverty.
In 2024, energy consumption slightly increased, marking a halt in the decline that began in the two previous years. This rise reflects insufficient momentum with respect to national reduction targets. At this stage, the available elements do not yet allow for a clear identification of the factors likely to explain this slowdown, nor to anticipate its long-term persistence. As a hypothesis, it is nevertheless possible that the energy savings linked to efforts of usage sobriety have reached a first plateau.
In 2025, provisional data indicate a decrease in consumption that offsets the increase observed in 2024.
In other respects, progress should be noted: the improvement in the energy and environmental performance of new constructions enabled by RE2020 has already been mentioned, as well as the structuring of the EPR sector to encourage circularity in waste management. For glass and plaster, the benefits of the EPR sector are already visible: it has allowed the rapid deployment of separate collection and recycled materials preparation channels, which has met strong demand fromproducers of plasterboard and glazed joinery.
Finally, in terms of renovation, the number of homes that have benefited from extensive renovation aided by the National Housing Agency (Anah) saw a significant increase in 2024 and 2025, reaching 120,300 homes in 2025, which is a 68% rise compared to 2023. This positive trend shows that, with this ambitious and incentivizing scheme, household demand is present and the expected increase in renovations can be triggered.
Statements collected by Nolwenn Jaumouillé.
Sylvain Bessonneau does not work for, advise, hold shares in, or receive funds from any organization that could benefit from this article, and has declared no affiliations other than his research institution.
–ref. Renovation, sobriety… How to improve the environmental record of French buildings?https://theconversation.com/renovation-sobriete-comment-ameliorer-le-bilan-environnemental-des-immeubles-francais-276767