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Communication Dans Un Congrès Année : 2023

Concerning the future of real estate markets. How the use of EPC in sustainability policies is prospectively shaping the economy of the housing sector

Catherine Grandclément
  • Fonction : Auteur
EDF

Résumé

Sustainable building is an area of government that involves projecting into a distant future. In France, for example, public policies aim to align the whole housing stock to low carbon standards by 2050. The Energy Performance Certificate (EPC) is a policy instrument which is nowadays crucial for such projections. Originally used to provide information on the quality and value of real estate goods, the EPC has become a central instrument in the concerning of markets towards energy and climate policy objectives. Recent reforms of this tool and of the associated regulatory framework offer a crucial venue to examine the different dynamics of market futures enacted by the use of such a public policy tool. This article proposes to explore these dynamics. It is based on a survey of the EPC technical and regulatory reforms carried out in France since 2020. It was conducted within the framework of the PREMOCLASSE project. We interviewed the public decision-makers and various actors who contributed to the reform, and studied the public controversies associated with the EPC. The EPC is a tool enabling to rank dwellings on an A to G (green to red) scale according to their energy performance. It was set up in 2002 by a European directive which transposed to the real estate market energy labels that were previously used for light bulbs and household appliances. Since its implementation, the EPC has undergone a continuous extension of its uses in sustainability policies, and has been the object of various controversies. It is a particularly interesting object for market studies, at the crossroads of several notions. On the one hand it is a market device (Callon et al, 2007), but at the same time an instrument of public action (Lascoumes and Le Galès, 2005; McFall, 2014). As it is related with sustainability objectives, it contributes to the organization of market for collective concerns (Frankel et al, 2019). It can also be considered an instrument for anticipatory expertise (Aykut et al, 2019), in the sense that the indications it gives are used in prospective modelling. EPC also plays an interesting role in specific processes of assetization (Birch and Muniesa 2020) in the real estate markets: dwellings are generally considered not only as a use goods (they are made to be lived in) but also as investment goods (they are used to store economic value), and their qualification through the EPC can play a role in the articulation between both roles. Our investigation makes it possible to contrast three configurations in the use of the EPC in the re-shaping of market agencements and in the temporal dynamics underlying the intervention of the state in these agencements. In the first configuration, the EPC is used as a quality label, through which the state aims to nudge the behaviors of market actors to produce what one could call a self-sustainable, free, qualitative economy. This configuration corresponds to the original, historical use of the EPC, serving as a quality label. Here, the public authorities seek to promote the fluidity of the market, for example by imposing the display of the EPC in real estate agencies to promote its use by market players. In this situation, the future is punctuated by the dynamics of the adjustment between supply and demand through which better qualified goods will pull badly qualified goods out of the market. Market optimism dominates here – or it should – and the future is characterized by a smooth and continuous curb of market change. A classic question here is the motivation of economic actors for change. An example to illustrate the difficulties in really enacting this scheme has been the debate on the existence or not of a "green value": will the energy performance, revealed by the EPC, increase the price of real estate and constitute a motivational structure for the actors? Will they be motivated to renovate their home before selling it, in order to increase its value? In the second configuration, the EPC is used as a criterion in conditional aid schemes. In France there is a rather rich and complex system of assistance for this purpose. An example of the policy measures subsidizing homeowners to renovate their homes is the program “Better housing” launched in 2011 by one of the agencies in charge of renovation: through this program homeowners with dwellings rated as F or G could benefit from subsidies, zero rate loans or tax exemptions. Here, the future of the market is conditioned by the temporality of finance. The state behaves as an investor supporting actors and segments that can bring the sustainable dynamics. Notions such as investment, profitability, return on investment are at stake, operating at two levels: the public authorities help homeowners to become investors in energy performance; the public authorities are themselves an investor since they subsidize property owners in various ways. An interesting question here is the adjustment between the instrument and these investment logics. An example of controversy concerns the notion of good renovation: should we renovate in one go or in several times? For example, should an owner of a property classified D try to go to A right away, or first from D to B and then from B to A? There has been a debate in France to tell which renovation approach would constitute a good investment. In the third configuration, the EPC is used as a sign that determines the conformity of a good in the market, and that makes it possible to exclude from the economy the segments that are considered unsustainable. The state defines the boundaries of the market, through classical regulatory intervention. An example is the recent law that aims to exclude energy sieves from the renovation market. It was published in 2021, to progressively prohibit housing classified E, F, G according to the measures presented in the table below: Year 2023 2025 2028 2034 EPC gradesF and G G F E MeasureRent freezeProhibition of rentalProhibition of rentalProhibition of rental Here, the future is apprehended through the discontinuities created by public action in the market. During the discussion of this law at the parliament, a lot of debates occurred concerning the consequences of such discontinuities. For instance, should owners be required to renovate when their dwelling is badly rated? And if the law made such renovation mandatory, would owners really renovate or would they rather sell their goods – making thus part of the rental market slide to the acquisition market? In this article, we will particularly focus on this third configuration.

Domaines

Sociologie
Fichier non déposé

Dates et versions

hal-04393757 , version 1 (15-01-2024)

Identifiants

  • HAL Id : hal-04393757 , version 1

Citer

Catherine Grandclément, Alexandre Mallard. Concerning the future of real estate markets. How the use of EPC in sustainability policies is prospectively shaping the economy of the housing sector. Interdisciplinary Market Studies Workshop 7, Jun 2023, Edinburgh (Scotland), United Kingdom. ⟨hal-04393757⟩
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