The objective set by the government to replace millions of gas boilers within a few years “is not sustainable”, assured Wednesday the president of the Confederation of crafts and small building companies (Capeb), that the Prime Minister, Elisabeth Borne, mentioned 2026 as the deadline. “We can’t say that in 2026, we’ll remove the gas boiler and train 200,000 heating engineers in the heat pump. This calendar is not tenable, ”said Jean-Christophe Repon, recently re-elected president of Capeb, during a press briefing in Paris. The Prime Minister presented on Monday a plan to reduce France’s greenhouse gas emissions, in which the change of boilers is among the first targeted items, without mentioning a precise timetable. But according to Jean-Christophe Repon, received like other leaders of employers’ organizations on Tuesday by Elisabeth Borne as part of the social agenda, the Prime Minister mentioned 2026 as “possible and potentially desirable deadline”.
He says he asked him to consider “practical reality”. “I said it to Elisabeth Borne and will say it again to Olivier Klein”, the Minister of Housing, “it does not hold as long as the EPRs are not built” to produce the electricity necessary for the heat pumps. The executive’s plan expects a significant saving of 8 million tonnes of CO2 per year from the decline of oil and gas boilers in housing. But the decision is not clear either on how, between increased aid or new regulations. Jean-Christophe Repon also castigated the recent start, on May 1, of the four new building waste recycling sectors known as extended producer responsibility (REP), yet already postponed twice. Free for private individuals and building tradesmen at specially provided drop-off points, collection is now financed by an “eco-contribution” paid by “marketers”, manufacturers and importers of cement, pipes, glass wool or sanitary… “No one understood the REP and yet it is operational”, lamented Jean-Christophe Repon according to which the companies concerned “pay an ecotax without having the collection points”.
