France’s summer thermal comfort crisis has prompted the Ministry of Housing to back amendments to the housing bill regarding the installation of shutters and reversible heat pumps in residential apartment buildings, according to statements released by Housing Minister Vincent Jeanbrun on Friday, September 25. Highlighting that newly constructed buildings rated A for energy efficiency have also become “bouilloires” during periods of heatwaves, the government is moving to overhaul how residential buildings are evaluated for extreme heat as climate change accelerates.
The Regulatory Blind Spot of Summer Comfort
Current French housing evaluations fail to account for escalating summer temperatures, which drove indoor mercury past 30 to 35 degrees Celsius in some dwellings. While the Energy Performance Diagnosis, known as DPE, is linked to the energy consumption of a dwelling, it provides no metric for extreme heat resilience. Industrial alliance Ignes published a study in June revealing that more than four out of ten homes lack shutters on all sun-exposed windows.
“Today, summer comfort is much less objectivable than energy renovation,” Vincent Jeanbrun told journalists on September 25, pointing out that even top-tier energy-efficient buildings fail to protect residents from severe heat.
Legislative Overhauls for Copropriétés
To tackle structural bottlenecks in shared residential buildings, known as copropriétés, the Ministry of Housing supports specific amendments to the housing bill. Scheduled for a second reading at the National Assembly no later than mid-November, the legislative package targets approval processes and architectural restrictions that currently prevent building upgrades.
The government supports making the opinion of the Architectes des Bâtiments de France “simple” (consultative) for exterior shutter installations and reversible heat pumps designed for cooling. The ministry also aims to replace absolute majority rules with a simple majority vote during general assemblies of copropriétaires for these subjects.
Financing Renovations Through Collective Loans
Addressing the financial barriers of large-scale building upgrades, the housing ministry intends to strengthen collective auto-adhesion loans established under the 2024 degraded housing law. Currently, this collective funding mechanism suffers from legal ambiguities that deter commercial banks from offering the product.
“We created the concept, but legally it is not solid enough,” Jeanbrun explained regarding the reluctance of financial institutions lacking reliable risk-assessment tools. Amendments filed for the upcoming parliamentary debate seek to solidify the legal framework. Simultaneously, an amendment introduced by Horizons deputy François Jolivet proposes promoting a building-wide collective DPE to sometimes substitute individual diagnostics.
The National Assembly will debate these amendments during the week of November 16, or earlier if parliamentary scheduling permits.
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