The State Pays Electricity Bills Without Solving Energy-Inefficient Housing

In France, 72 billion euros have been paid since 2021 to cushion energy bills [11], without touching the walls. MaPrimeRénov’ helped 340,801 homes in 2024, but fewer than 13% underwent truly transformative renovation [17]. The choice for 2027 is clear: reserve renovation aid for global overhauls targeting lower-income households and make the timeline for phasing out energy-inefficient rentals binding on landlords, or continue offsetting a building crisis with public money without requiring results.

More than six million people who cannot heat their homes properly

In France, 3.1 million households officially face energy precarity, according to the 2025 dashboard from the National Observatory of Energy Precarity (ONPE) [5]. That is more than six million people dealing with difficulties heating their homes or paying their bills. This share has hovered between 10% and 12% since 2015 [5]. This plateau is not a victory.

Behind this plateau, conditions are deteriorating by other measures. In 2024, nearly 1.2 million households suffered energy cuts or power reductions due to unpaid bills [5]. That is a 24% increase from 2023. In 2025, 35% of French people report suffering from cold in their homes during winter, for at least 24 hours [5]. In 2020, only 14% of households were affected.

The breakdown by income reveals a structural mechanism. In 2025, among the 10% of households with the lowest incomes, 21.7% occupy energy-inefficient homes [5]. Among the 20% of households just above the middle class, this rate drops to 15.5%.

Lower-income households are overrepresented in the energy-inefficient private rental stock, documented by SDES on January 1, 2023 [9]. These modest-income households thus pay both the most affordable rent and the heaviest energy bill. The inequality lies in the built asset: renters bear its cost without holding the key.

Prices have shifted dramatically over the long term. French electricity prices rose from 11 to 16 cents per kilowatt-hour between 2009 and 2014 [7]. They went from 16 to 25 cents between 2019 and 2024 [7]. French electricity, long the cheapest in Europe thanks to its nuclear program, has caught up with and sometimes exceeded the European average. In 2023, households devoted 9.4% of their budget to energy spending [10].

International comparison provides nuance without erasing the issue. In 2024, electricity prices for French households rose 18% as the price cap ended [7]. In the European Union, the average price remained stable that same year.

Portugal and France experienced the sharpest increases: respectively +15% and +18% [7]. In 2025, the average price of electricity for French households stands at 254.6 euros per megawatt-hour, down 9.0% year-over-year [18]. This decline reflects temporary abundance of nuclear electricity, a favorable situation but not guaranteed over the medium term.

Summer changing its nature, homes built for winter

French energy precarity was constructed around cold. The criteria, aid programs, energy performance certificates (DPE), renovation policies—everything was calibrated for winter. Yet heat has become the leading mortal risk.

It now kills more than road accidents. Summer 2025 caused 5,700 heat-related deaths [15]. That same season, there were 3,200 road deaths [15]. Summer 2025 also led to 24,000 emergency care visits. In less than a decade, 40,000 people have died from heat-related causes in France [15].

In 2025, 64% of French people report suffering from excessive heat in their homes for at least 24 hours during the previous summer [5]. Among homes with insufficient summer comfort, 48% become veritable boiler-houses during heat waves, according to the Fondation pour le Logement in 2026 [14].

This risk is socially concentrated [14]. Residents of working-class neighborhoods are overexposed to heat waves because of high density, materials that accumulate heat, and lack of green space. They are also in worse health on average and work in jobs more exposed to heat.

In 2024, France still consumed more than 60% of energy from fossil sources [10]. Reducing heat loss in winter and withstanding heat in summer requires work of a different nature: reinforced roof insulation, solar protection, natural ventilation. These two objectives are not the same. One does not automatically imply the other.

Renovation that fails to renovate what matters

As of January 1, 2025, energy-inefficient homes, classified F and G on the DPE, represent about 3.9 million homes out of 30.9 million primary residences, or 12.7% of the stock [8]. This figure has declined since 2022, but the trend is partly artificial. Nearly 40% of the decline compared to January 2024 stems from a DPE calculation reform for small spaces, not from actual work [8]. For the stock to meet the state’s climate targets by 2050, 80 to 90% of homes should reach classes A and B. Today, 9% do [8].

MaPrimeRénov’ prioritized volume at the expense of depth. In 2024, 340,801 homes were renovated with nearly 3.29 billion euros in public aid [17]. Among them, only 43,271 recorded a jump of three energy classes or more [17]. Fewer than 13% underwent truly transformative renovation.

Budget constraints tightened precisely when ambition should have increased. The 2025 budget law allocates 2.1 billion euros to MaPrimeRénov’ [17]. That is a billion euros less than in 2024.

The price cap cost approximately 60 billion euros over 2022-2023, or 2.2% of GDP, according to the Bank of France [13]. The Court of Auditors estimated total spending at 72 billion euros since its introduction in March 2024 [11]. These measures protected households in the short term.

Without them, the increase in electricity rates would have reached +40% in 2022 instead of +7.4% [12]. But they changed nothing about the state of buildings. By cushioning bills without incentivizing renovation, the cap made the structural problem less visible.

The Court of Auditors is unambiguous: for lack of targeting, these measures burdened taxpayers far beyond what was needed to protect lower-income households [11]. The lesson has not been learned. The energy check, renewed each year, compensates for prices without transforming homes. In 2024, 59% of energy check recipients nonetheless reported being cold in their homes [5].

The causal chain is there. Lower-income households live in energy-intensive homes they do not own or cannot afford to renovate for lack of capital. The state compensates bills rather than financing investment in buildings. Homes remain inefficient in winter and overheated in summer. Every euro of energy check given without renovation conditions defers future spending onto renters, the health system, and the public budget.

The issue transcends housing alone. RTE, in its 2025-2035 forecasting report, notes that France today finds itself in a situation of abundance of decarbonized electricity, highly favorable to electrification [16]. Yet the observed pace of electrification remains too slow to guarantee meeting climate targets without additional measures.

Off-grid, the investment need for electricity production and flexibility is estimated at between 25 and 35 billion euros per year by 2030-2035 [16]. That is roughly three times the pace of the previous ten years. Part of this cost will be passed to bills. Low wholesale market prices benefit lower-income households only if public policy organizes it [2].

Transform buildings, not cushion the bill

Changing course requires accepting what the price-cap-energy-check-MaPrimeRénov’ sequence has not accepted. Aid for energy consumption not conditioned on renovation reproduces energy precarity rather than resolving it. The center of gravity of policy must shift from price compensation to building transformation.

First mechanism to correct: a landlord renting an energy-inefficient home indirectly benefits from the energy check paid to their tenant, without ever being forced to renovate. The 2021 Climate and Resilience Law enshrined in law a timeline for phasing out inefficient rentals binding on landlords. Its application has been postponed, watered down, or circumvented by methodological DPE reforms favoring small spaces. Making this timeline effective is the first lever.

Second lever: shift MaPrimeRénov’ toward comprehensive renovation. In 2024, 100,000 comprehensive renovation projects were completed [17]. The government target is 370,000 truly renovated homes per year by 2030. The gap stems largely from preference given to single measures over renovations that actually jump several DPE classes. Public aid must structure a supply chain capable of absorbing an annual pace of half a million high-performance renovations, targeting 80% of funding on the 40% of households with the lowest incomes [3].

Third lever: integrate summer comfort as a condition of complete renovation. The current DPE primarily measures heating consumption. Summer comfort criteria do not condition access to aid. By 2050, with 4 to 5°C warming in French cities according to Météo-France projections, a home rated B for energy could become uninhabitable in summer. Building renovation must systematically integrate both constraints.

Fourth lever: change the financing horizon. MaPrimeRénov’ suffers from a double problem: insufficient volume and too short a duration. An owner investing between 30,000 and 80,000 euros in work must have assurance that the aid level will not be cut between quote and completion. Private actors—infrastructure funds or green bond issuers backed by guarantees—must finance the “renovated housing” asset over twenty or thirty years [4]. The state plays the role of guarantor of last resort, not annual payer under budget pressure.

Fifth lever: refine energy check targeting. The Court of Auditors and ONPE have documented the current targeting shortcomings [11] [5]. The energy check must remain, as it protects populations unable to renovate in the short term. Its amount must be adjusted based on floor area, home DPE, and ongoing renovation effort. The goal is to prevent it from becoming a perpetual rent for homes that will never be renovated.

Sixth lever: guarantee lower-income households access to low-priced decarbonized electricity. The current window of abundance is real but temporary. It must serve to accelerate electrification of heating through heat pumps replacing oil and gas in renovated homes, prioritizing the 40% of lowest-income households. Energy transitions have occurred where political environments made them possible, as documented by Hannah Ritchie in her work on successful decarbonization [20]. The market alone will not do the job.

Sources

[2] Dani Rodrik, Shared Prosperity in a Fractured World, Harvard Kennedy School, 2025, https://drodrik.scholar.harvard.edu/publications (consulted 01/08/2026).

[3] Mariana Mazzucato, The Common Good Economy, Penguin, 2026, https://marianamazzucato.com/books/the-common-good-economy/ (consulted 01/08/2026).

[4] Benjamin Fremaux, “We Are Becoming a Major Player in Investment,” Institut Montaigne, 2025, https://www.institutmontaigne.org/rencontres/quelles-solutions-face-la-crise-climatique (consulted 01/08/2026).

[5] ONPE, “Energy Precarity Dashboard, 2025 Edition,” November 2025, https://onpe.org/tableau-de-bord-2025 (consulted 01/08/2026).

[7] SDES, “Electricity Prices in France and the European Union in 2024,” July 2025, https://www.statistiques.developpement-durable.gouv.fr/prix-de-lelectricite-en-france-et-dans-lunion-europeenne-en-2024-0 (consulted 01/08/2026).

[8] SDES, “Housing Stock by Energy Performance Class as of January 1, 2025,” 2025, https://www.statistiques.developpement-durable.gouv.fr/le-parc-de-logements-par-classe-de-performance-energetique-au-1er-janvier-2025 (consulted 01/08/2026).

[9] SDES, “Energy Performance of the Private Rental Stock as of January 1, 2023,” 2023, https://www.statistiques.developpement-durable.gouv.fr/la-performance-energetique-du-parc-locatif-prive-au-1er-janvier-2023 (consulted 01/08/2026).

[10] SDES, “France’s Energy Balance in 2024, Summary,” 2025, https://www.statistiques.developpement-durable.gouv.fr/bilan-energetique-de-la-france-en-2024-synthese (consulted 01/08/2026).

[11] Court of Auditors, “Report on Measures to Counter Rising Energy Prices,” March 2024, https://www.hellowatt.fr/electricite-et-gaz/bouclier-tarifaire (consulted 01/08/2026).

[12] CRE, “Cost of the Price Cap,” July 2024, https://lenergeek.com/2024/07/25/energie-cout-bouclier-tarifaire-france-cre/ (consulted 01/08/2026).

[13] Bank of France, “Analysis of the Price Cap,” December 2023, https://www.connaissancedesenergies.org/tribune-actualite-energies/bouclier-tarifaire-sur-les-prix-de-lenergie-en-france-quel-bilan (consulted 01/08/2026).

[14] Fondation pour le Logement, “Hot Neighborhoods! Boiler-House Homes and Summer Energy Precarity,” June 2026, https://www.fondationpourlelogement.fr/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/logements-bouilloires-etude-2026.pdf (consulted 01/08/2026).

[15] Santé Publique France, heat mortality data summer 2025, cited in Fondation pour le Logement, June 2026, https://www.fondationpourlelogement.fr/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/logements-bouilloires-etude-2026.pdf (consulted 01/08/2026).

[16] RTE, “2025-2035 Forecasting Report,” 2025, https://www.rte-france.com/actualites/bilan-previsionnel-2025-2035-france-est-position-avantageuse-electrifier-atteindre-ses (consulted 01/08/2026).

[17] ANAH / Ministry of Housing, “MaPrimeRénov’ 2024 Results and 2025 Budget,” February 2025, https://www.batiweb.com/actualites/renovation-energetique/maprimerenov-le-budget-baisse-d-un-milliard-d-euros-en-2025-45916 (consulted 01/08/2026).

[18] Eurostat, “Electricity Prices for Households,” semi-annual series, first half 2025, https://selectra.info/energie/actualites/marche/prix-electricite-france-vs-europe-eurostat-2026 (consulted 01/08/2026).

[20] Hannah Ritchie, Clearing the Air, 2025, https://hannahritchie.com/ (consulted 01/08/2026).