Case Study: Aid System for Thermal Refurbishment of Social Housing Stock in Champagne Ardenne Region

Short Description

In may 2009, in the context of the revision procedure of the Article 7 of the ERDF Regulation, the European Union allowed to use 4% of the national ERDF amounts to improve energy efficiency in social housing.
In France, this has been integrated to the objectives of the social housing organisations and to the commitments they had made in the context of the French Grenelle plan.
The budget of 320 millions euros allocated to energy performance and sustainable energy in social housing enable the organisations to implement projects that are exemplary and repeatable.

In France, projects that are supported by ERDF must:
- focus on dwellings that are the most consuming energy
- being exemplary and having a knock on effect
- concern a lot of dwellings

ERDF is a complement to other funding:
- the eco-loan of the Caisse des Dépôts et Consignations
- subsidies from public national agencies (ADEME, ANRU)
- subsidies from local collectivities

The implementation in France has good results thanks to a strong mobilisation. At the European level, an active lobbying has been developed to the European Institutions. At the national level, the French Federation USH has worked with the French Administration on the conditions of implementation of the ERDF measure in regions. At least, the French regional associations for social housing have worked with their partners on the identification of the needs in local stocks, the definition of eligibility criterion, a strategy of intervention on the stock and a support to local organisations.

At the local level, the Regional Associations for social housing were mobilized to enable this implementation and to help the SHO developing new projects. They lead different types of actions:

- Identifications of needs.
- Implementation of the partnership.
- Support to project managers.
- Financial engineering.
- Funding and monitoring of projects.

The aid system developed in The Champagne Ardenne Region can be linked to Financing engineering kind of action.
In the Champagne Ardenne Region, the SGAR, the Caisse des Depôts et Consignations, the Region and the Regional Association for social housing worked on a common system with an eco-loan at 0% for 15 years and an additional grant from the ERDF and the Region. Both procedure are almost identical and there is a single contact point. On October 2010, 2707 homes have been rehabilitated with the support of this common system. The average consumption is 304 KW/m2/an before and estimated at 146 KW/m2/an after renovation work. The energy gain is estimated at 29,959,020 KW / m2/year and 5243 tonnes of CO2 will be saved.

Key Elements

Main Results

On October 2010, 2707 homes have been rehabilitated with the support of this common system.
The energy gain is estimated at 29,959,020 KW / m2/year and 5243 tonnes of CO2 will be saved.

The ERDF amount in the Champagne Ardenne Region has been allocated as follow (million Euro):
Regional ERDF amount:196
4% of the ERDF fund for Housing 7,5
Allocated amount: 1,8

Lessons learned

In France, the mobilisation to implement the ERDF measure should have strong effects on energy performances of the retrofitted housing stock.

Additional Information

For any information please contact:

Laurence Malassagne
Director of ARCA (L'Union social pour l'habitat de Champagne Ardenne)

Website: http://www.arca-hlm.com/