Emmanuel Macron presents on Monday the concrete measures of ecological planning. The president no longer wants to ban gas boilers but instead deploy heat pumps.
There is no longer any question of banning gas boilers: Emmanuel Macron announced this on Sunday September 24 before presenting the plan for ecological planning on Monday. The president wants to go “twice as fast” to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 55% by 2030, while advocating a non-punitive ecology. “We will not ban them because we cannot leave our compatriots, especially in the most rural areas, without a solution”, the president elaborated on Sunday evening. On the other hand, the deployment of heat pumps will be “accompanied”.
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Eliminating gas boilers by 2030 seems illusory today. Last year, 83,000 were removed, but there are still 12.5 million in homes. This is much more than oil boilers since there are still 2.8 million left. To speed up – and encourage – the end of gas, the idea that is emerging is to put an end to public aid, such as MaPrimeRénov, for new gas boilers.
Aid which will, however, be reinforced for those who equip themselves with heat pumps. The overall budget of MaPrimeRénov will increase. According to working documents circulating before the ecological planning council, the overall budget will increase by 1.6 billion next year, to reach 4 billion euros.
Heat pumps to quadruple in eight years
Because the installation of heat pumps has fallen behind schedule. 100,000 heat pumps were produced and installed in 2018, reaching 350,000 units last year. France will have to produce “a million heat pumps” by the end of the five-year term, tripling the current level, as part of the ecological planning announced Monday by Emmanuel Macron.
The first, urgent project is to be able to produce these heat pumps. “We decided to develop an industrial heat pump sector, advances Emmanuel Macron, and therefore succeed in producing a million heat pumps in our territory, while at the same time training 30,000 installers.” It will therefore be necessary to relocate the production of key components, compressors and exchangers, to France. This is why the State is no longer in a hurry to ban gas boilers since France does not have the material means to replace them.