Policy interactions between European directives and the French white certificate scheme or how to give the right signal to the residential refurbishment market

摘要

Recent European energy policies like the Energy EfficiencyDirective (EED) and the EcoDesign Directive (EDD) set newtargets to increase energy efficiency.Article 7 of EED implies that EU Member States set up energysavings amounting to 1.5 % of the annual energy sales tofinal customers from 2014 to 2020. To comply with this requirementthe level of French White Certificate (WC) obligationshould double in the next period.Moreover, the EDD directive sets the minimum energy efficiencylevel only for a limited number of equipment such asboilers, heat pumps and water heater. In this regard, the WCscheme deemed savings must be revised in order to complywith the European calculation rules of EED’s Annex 5.Certain adjustments must be made to the French WC whichhas been enforced since 2006 and is entering its third period(2015-2017) to be in tune with these directives. Thus, the WCscheme undergoes a revision of unitary savings differentiatingbetween devices already covered by EDD (e.g. boilers) and applianceswhich are not (e.g. windows). The outcome is a blendof different references (stock, market) and savings (total, marginal)depending on the considered unitary action. Consequencescould be a lack of clarity especially for non-specialistsof energy policy.This paper addresses the question of a possible conflict ofinterests between the European system, allocating savings bydirective, and the overall customer savings. Scenarios embeddedimpacts of the new European rules on the WC market arequantified in order to answer the question: will the third periodof WC give a positive signal to the refurbishment market?The overall revising process of the third period of WC and itsconsequences will be presented concerning the building sector.More precisely, calculations to quantify impacts on unitary actionsavings, on WC costs and on the retrofitting market structureare detailed.Finally, suggestions are proposed that enable both the enhancementof energy efficiency at the European level as wellas the sustaining of the dynamics of the French WC market byproviding clear and explicit information.