ORFEE is a European H2020-funded project built with the first four French third-party financing companies and that aims to strengthen their activity as technical and financial assemblers for the renovation of private housing. This project is coordinated by Energies Demain.
THIRD-PARTY FINANCING?
Third-party financing companies are public establishments or companies under the control of local authorities. They are the “One-Stop Shops” recommended by the 2018 European Directive on the Energy Performance of Buildings to reduce the large gap (observed in most European countries) between the ambition to renovate the residential stock – an essential stake if we want the energy transition to create jobs and be inclusive – and the difficulty on the ground of orienting both the supply of and demand for renovation work towards energy efficiency.
The Office for Renovations and Financing for Energy Efficiency (ORFEE) does not exist yet, but the ORFEE project has started… just as the COVID-19 pandemic was taking hold…
STILL A GOOD TIMING!
In December 2020, faced by the Citizens’ Climate Convention, French President Emmanuel Macron proposed to study the extension of third-party financing offers before considering the introduction of renovation obligations.
The Minister for the Economy and the Minister for Housing have entrusted Olivier Sichel, the Caisse des Dépôts’s Deputy Director General, with the task of examining ways of improving the financing of renovations and in particular the potential of third-party financing.
The ORFEE project is working on optimising the financing of third-party financing companies and offering a guarantee of the works’ quality.
In 2021, we held a few workshops: on 27 January we discussed with France Stratégie and fed the work of the Sichel mission; on 1 February, we worked on the use by the Regions of European funds for an efficient energy renovation of the private residential stock… Watch this space for future developments!