2023-06-23 06:20:04
The new version of the energy performance diagnosis (DPE) of housing intended for sale or rental is once again being talked about. Badly. This time it concerns buildings built before 1948, i.e. a third of the French stock.
In an open letter sent, Wednesday, June 21, to the government, the chamber of real estate diagnosticians of the National Federation of Real Estate (Fnaim) and the association Sites & Cites Remarkables de France, chaired by former Minister Martin Malvy, ask to review the calculation methods, deemed, according to them, too penalizing and often ill-founded.
Not All Old Houses Are Energy Strainers
Since the implementation of the new DPE, in July 2021, more than 5 million diagnoses have already been carried out. According to a study by the Ecological Transition Agency (Ademe) carried out on 850,000 housing units, 60% of buildings built before 1948 would be classified E, F or G. In other words, they could be prohibited from renting by 2034, except renovation works. Since January 1, this is already the case for the worst rated of the G label.
“To believe that the older a building is, the more energy it consumes is a mistakesays Jonathan Fedy, deputy director of Remarkable Sites & Cities of France. A house built before 1948 is not necessarily an energy sieve. Even when it has not been restored. » Admittedly, the fact that the old stock is more often heated with oil and gas than recent buildings also contributes to degrading the ratings, but that does not explain everything either. Far from it.
Take bio-based materials into account
The problem actually comes from a certain number of omissions, made during the development of the DPE, in particular on the construction techniques. «Cob insulation, for example, is automatically degraded, because Ademe has not taken it into account. Ditto for insulation with strawexplains Yannick Ainouche, president of the chamber of real estate diagnosticians of the Fnaim and signatory of the missive. Natural ventilation systems are also ignored, even old houses often bring more freshness in summer. »
According to him, despite several successive corrections over the past two years, the method used, known as “3CL” (“conventional consumption calculation for housing”), still does not restore the intrinsic qualities of the old building. He argues for the establishment of a specific ECD.
«The industrial materials used for insulation are not necessarily all suitable for old buildings. They block the air and can lead to indoor dampness and mold, leading to public health problems,” assures the deputy director of Sites & Cités remarkables, demanding that the use of biosourced products be taken into account.
Sometimes difficult to renovate
The subject is sensitive. According to a note produced in October 2022 by Insee and the Paris Region Institute, two-thirds of the private rental stock could be prohibited from renting, if work is not carried out. But it is sometimes complicated, in the case for example of a badly oriented apartment on the top floor of a Haussmann building, the renovation of which would cost “crazy sums with no guarantee of success”. “We have to agree to make exceptions for this type of accommodation,” supports Yannick Ainouche.
Last April, professionals had already sounded the alarm on small surfaces, disadvantaged in the current system for calculating DPEs, by calling for the establishment of a weighting coefficient. «In Paris, a 20 m2 studio equipped with a 100 liter hot water tank is classified F or G, solely because of excessive energy consumption”, says the president of the chamber of real estate diagnosticians. The method is about to be resolved, with the establishment of new weighting coefficients, currently under study.
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