France
Platform Coordinator
USH - L'Union Sociale pour l'Habitat dedicates its services to the lower income families. The guiding principles of USH are solidarity and housing quality. Its main activities are construction, acquisition, management and financing of housing, urban planning, city planning and services to the local communities. USH manages 5 million homes for rent and sale and has about 850 members with various legal statutes (public bodies, anonymous societies, cooperatives), but all are non-for-profit organisations.
Description of the Platform
The USH-led French POWER HOUSE Platform works to support its members in the application of the French National Climate Change strategy ‘Grenelle de l’Environnement’. The objective of the social housing movement in the context of the Grenelle is to bring the most inefficient housing currently rated ‘E’, ‘F’ and ‘G’ up to a ‘C’ rating and to establish the right technical and financial framework to bring the ‘D’ rated housing up to a ‘B’ class. The Platform works in partnership with industry and financial institutions in order to develop innovative approaches to energy efficiency and use of renewables in housing replicable at large scale.
Platform Strategy
“Local housing providers want to get strategic Energy Action Plans in place within their organizations to achieve their targets. They see a huge learning potential in having a structured exchange with their French and European counterparts on issues related to choice of products, sources of finance and new technologies. Members want to learn more about experiences gained through completed projects, in particular they report a lack of information on costs of investment in energy efficiency, costs of maintenance, resulting energy savings made. The Platform works to help members access the information they need and assists them in getting involved in European projects. The French POWER HOUSE team also works to ensure that information on EU funding streams such as the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF) will reach those who need it at local level.” - Ms Carine Puyol, French POWER HOUSE Platform coordinator.
Following a performance review, the Platform Coordinator has issued an updated strategy statement and priorities going forward:
“Having seen the positive results of the work done so far, in order to help our members to overcome the identified barriers in achieving the ambitious EU objectives for cutting energy consumption in existing and new buildings, the French POWER HOUSE Platform will continue its work on the ERDF and other European programmes. At EU level, it would be interesting to work on tenants’ behaviour and exchange information on the maintenance of completed projects and of the hosing stock as a whole, focusing also on the training of workers. The Platform should also investigate innovative financial mechanisms (e.g. interest subsidies, dedicated guarantee funds and revolving investment funds) taking into account the lifespan of the projects. We should improve the long-term financing; for example, in France, the ERDF or the eco-loan are established for a period of 3 to 4 years, therefore it is difficult for Social Housing Organisations to establish an energy strategy in these conditions knowing that the rehabilitation strategy is normally established for about the next 10 years to come.” - Ms Carine Puyol, French POWER HOUSE Platform coordinator.
