The ecological transition is still too expensive for French households. Buying an electric car or investing in the thermal renovation of your home has a cost that remains dissuasive for a majority of French people, according to the Institute of Economics for the Climate I4CE, a French think tank. And this, despite the “significant” increase in aid highlighted by the authors. A particularity of this study published Thursday in the middle of the budgetary debate in Parliament, it analyzes in detail the mechanics of the household budget.
What is the remaining liability if we change the boiler or windows while insulating? What is the payback time if you buy an electric car? What energy or fuel savings can we expect compared to monthly loan payments if we go into debt? Conclusion: “the economic conditions are not met today for all households to be able to invest”, with the risk that this “generates a rejection of transition policies” and leads “collectively to an impasse”.
This clear observation is not without remedy. The authors, who underline in passing that the obstacles to the energy transition are not only pecuniary, suggest to the legislator avenues of change for the eleven current aid programs, six for renovation including VAT at 5.5% on works since 1999, five for electric mobility. Public money covers 25% to 60% of the investment, depending on the scales.
Increasingly indexed to income, this aid is “around twice as high for low-income households as for well-off households”. Threshold effects, however, confuse decision-making for half of the population, those who are neither poor nor rich: “they cause the aid amounts to vary by several thousand euros,” points out the study.
The study distinguishes three categories, the 30% of “modest” households with the lowest incomes, the 20% of “wealthy” households with the highest incomes, and the middle classes which represent half of the population. Even with a zero-interest loan, however, the institute emphasizes, “the financing of the remainder continues to come up against (the) debt capacity” of households: it represents more than a year of income for the middle classes , and 10 years or more for the poorest households.
Regarding cars, “when we compare the purchase of a new standard electric city car with keeping an old gasoline car, this investment does not pay off over 20 years for any household,” notes the study.
