Sustainable cities and building energy efficiency

According to the National Low Carbon Strategy (SNBC), France must significantly accelerate both the rate and quality of residential renovations. Since 2022, the country should be achieving 700,000 deep renovations per year. To attain this goal, an additional €28 billion per year in investment will be required between 2024 and 2030.

Nevertheless, the current pace, around 90,000 deep renovations per year, remains far below the objective. One of the main barriers is households’ limited ability to finance high-quality renovation works, making it difficult to scale up efforts to the required level.​

Decision-making cannot occur unilaterally. The mission of the Sustainable Finance Observatory is to bring together diverse stakeholders - each offering unique information, expertise and actionable levers. The starting point is to identify a shared objective and from this common foundation, we facilitate dialogue and collective intelligence processes to pinpoint shared challenges and co-develop effective solutions. These exchanges make it possible to confront different perspectives, gather key insights and design innovative financing mechanisms aligned with economic, social and environmental goals.

In parallel, we seek to scale up promising solutions - whether related to deep renovation processes or financing mechanisms - by developing viable business models that are replicable within the country and transferable across borders.

Crucially, we systematically consider the social dimension of these challenges including access to credit for low-income households, efforts required to comply with evolving regulation and the immediate and long-term impacts on purchasing power.

We also reflect on the resilience and adaptability of the building stock to climate change - whether in relation to heatwaves, cold snaps or flooding risk.