Executive summary

The ESFA project (Energy Shift Financing Agency)[1] aims to facilitate the massive financing of the energy renovation (ER) of French public buildings, and at the same time to control the public debt. Through this ER of buildings, the ESFA aims to achieve economic benefits (such as the reduction of energy dependence, reduction of the trade deficit and competitiveness), as well as social (jobs), environmental (CO2) and financial benefits (reduction of the public debt). Meanwhile, it will address one of the major challenges of the European climate and energy policy[2].

Buildings account for 45% of energy consumption in France (and 10 to 15% of surfaces are public buildings). Therefore, it is a major and priority segment of the energy transition. The ESFA project proposes a massive stimulus for energy efficiency (EE) projects thanks to a comprehensive system allowing the financing of more than 50% of a potential of € 5-10 bn energy retrofit per year for 10 years. ER projects often offer potential profitability, but generally at a level that is too low to massively attract private funding without an innovative mechanism. In addition to its comprehensive and macroeconomic approach, the ESFA project focuses on a number of key-needs to trigger a change of scale in the ER of public buildings, including the improvement of financing conditions and the fair accounting of these specific operations outside the public debt.

The ESFA project aims at being simple, mass-scale, shared, and quick to implement. At the heart of the considered scheme, it is proposed that the ESFA provides a high-quality guarantee (based on its own funds and guaranteed by the State) to commercial banks.

This project consists in a study of a number of technical issues that are not detailed in this note, but of which this note gives an overview of the main issues. The ESFA project has identified additional obstacles and opportunities which will have to be addressed at a later stage: the mobilization of local policymakers, impacts in terms of jobs to be modeled, professional qualifications, the mobilization of SMEs, …