NEEDS/CHANGES, BARRIERS, OPPORUNITIES

Country

FRANCE

City-planning :

- Simplifying the DHCS perimeter classification rules

- Giving incentives to guidance schemes for DHCS

- Giving competition advantages to existing DHCS

- Giving a priority to DHC on new urban areas and makeover operations

- Charging the entity that sparks off the network canting of its cost

- Finding responses to risks and hazards in setting up a DHCS

- Softening the contract regulation

Energy policy :

- Formalising the link between DHC and R&R energies

- Creating a support fund for biomass supply

- Promoting the DHS that use several energy sources

- Simplifying administrative procedures (ex : white certificates)

Thermal regulation:

- Granting better consideration of shared heating

- Controlling individual equipments’ emissions or tax them

- Put an end to the inconsistencies in the thermal regulation

Tax regulation:

- Making the taxation rules on polluting emissions equitable

- Restore equity between private initiatives and DHC regarding CO₂ emission quotas

- Giving a direct tax incentive to connected users

- Avoid carbon tax on DHCS

- Generalizing reduced VAT for all DHCS

- Suppressing taxes on biomass DHCS

Costs & Tariffs:

- Granting better consideration to DHC in the energy precariousness rules

- Adjusting retail gas prices to the real costs

- Promoting cogenerated electricity by increasing the purchase price

- Imposing a fairer tenants/landlords share of investment costs

Reduced VAT rate on heat supplies

Renewable Heat Fund

Support measures for developing renewable energies, especially through the Grenelle Works

Market opening on gas and electricity that led to the electricity purchase obligation

Obligation to assess the possibility to connect to a DHS

Involvement of local authorities and development of new urban areas

White certificates

Pro-DHC associations work

Support policy for individual heating systems, especially for gas and electricity, creating a competition distortion :

- GHG emissions,

- price for regulated gas, unfavourable to big consumers

- Regulation creating state owned companies for gas and electricity distribution

Legislative framework:

- Conditions in which contracts can be extended in time that are too rigid

- Public accounting rules that impose to separate investments and functioning and distort competition

Investments:

- Heaviness of investments

- Financing conditions (loan rates and risk coverage)

- Time needed before subsidies are paid

- Time needed before implementation

Thermal/energy legislation:

- Calculation methods unfavourable to DHS (thermal regulation)

- Increasing regulatory constraints on DHS (especially HT ones)

- Standards about network proximity

- CO₂ quotas

- Limitation of heat demand

- DHC energy efficiency not taken into account

- CHP not considered as a R&R energy

Tax rules:

- Complexity of tax rules

- Uneven treatment of all parties (ex: landfill)

- Risk to get a carbon tax on DHS

Billing:

- Complexity of billing

- Lack of social tariffs on DHC (that exist for gas and electricity)

Price and payoff levels of the investments

Lack of political will

Lack of new collective constructions

Urban spreading

Lack of information among the real-estate project partners

Appropriation by local authorities of the heating public service

Lack of communication between local authorities, consumers and professionnals

Absence of global costs thinking

Public domain occupation because of the roadworks

Weakness of lobbying compared to the major gas and electricity companies

Decrease of heat demand

Individualisation of heat production, even in collective buildings

Absence of individual metering

Loss of collective equipments installers’ know-how

Difficulties for the historical (high temperature) solutions to adjust to low temperature techniques and to benefit from the same rules

Lack of information to the public

Cluttering of building basements