France profile

Overview

In 2019, the final energy consumption in France was 141.7 Mtoe. Transport, the largest consuming sector, kept a steady share of almost 31% in total final energy consumption, from 2000 to 2019. Over the same period, the residential sector increased from 28% to 29%, services increased from 13.4% to 16%, while industry decreased its share by more than 4 percentage points from 24.6% to 20.4%. The final energy consumption in 2019 was slightly below its 2000 level (-5 %) while the activity has increased, which can be explained by the technological progress and energy efficiency.

Energy efficiency for final consumers, as measured by ODEX (an indicator which measures the energy efficiency progress by main sector and for all final consumers), improved by an average of 1.2%/year from 2000 to 2019 or 20% over the period. In the residential sector, despite the economic crisis, there has been steady progress and larger gains than in the other sectors (2%/year). This trend can be explained by the introduction of many policies affecting buildings and appliances. In services and transport, the pace of energy efficiency improvements has been steady (0.9% and 0.7% per year respectively since 2000). In industry, improvement has reached 0.9%/year. Since 2016, there is a slowdown of the gains at the global level and specially for industry and services.

France adopted its third National Energy Efficiency Action Plan (NEEAP), which sets a final consumption target of 131.4 Mtoe in 2020. The energy savings measures are expected to save 20.5 Mtoe in 2020. The Energy Transition Act of 2015 introduced a provision aimed to have final energy consumption between 2012 and 2050. As part of the Transition Act, building renovations will be mandatory by 2025 for the least efficient dwellings (specific consumption over 330 kWh/m2). Governmental institutions will have to renew half of their vehicle fleet with low-emission cars; large companies (above 100 employees) will have to establish mobility plans. The 2005 Energy Law implemented energy savings obligations for energy companies, with the possibility of trading energy savings certificates. The energy saving target is 2133 TWhc ("c" for cumac: lifetime discounted cumulative savings) for the fourth period (2018-2021), which is equivalent to 12 Mtoe of annual energy savings. The 2021-2030 Integrated National Energy and Climate Plan (NECP) targets a 32.6% improvement of energy efficiency compared to European baseline scenario (PRIMES 2007: Primary energy consumption baseline), which corresponds to a final energy consumption target of 120.9 Mtoe in 2030.

Buildings

In 2019, space heating accounted for 65% of the sector’s consumption, electrical appliances for 19%, water heating for 10% and cooking for 5%. While electrical appliances consumption recorded an increase from 5.5 Mtoe to 7.7 Mtoe since 2000 (+1.8%/year), which can be explained by the increasing number of connected devices, space heating consumption share dropped by 8 percentage points over the period, thanks in particular to energy efficiency policies in existing buildings. Besides energy consumption of cooking and water heating decreased as well respectively by -0.9%/year and -0.2%/year. Since 2013, there has been a slowdown in energy efficiency progress for space heating, which consumption stands at around 10.5 koe/m².

The final energy consumption of residential buildings was 0.6 Mtoe lower in 2019 than in 2000. On the one hand, two main factors contributed to increase energy consumption over the period – more dwellings (by 8.1 Mtoe) and lifestyles (4.2 Mtoe for “more appliances per dwelling” and 0.6 Mtoe for “larger homes”). On the other hand, energy savings (16.5 Mtoe) more than offset the effect of the drivers of consumption growth and explain the observed slight decrease in building sector energy consumption.

In the service sector, the energy consumption per m² decreased by 0.6%/year since 2000. However, because of the diffusion of IT and electrical appliances in offices, the electricity consumption per employee has increased by 0.6%/year over the same period, despite the fact that most electrical equipment is more efficient.

In France, the first thermal building code (RT) was implemented in 1974 and has been updated and strengthened seven times since then. The last update (RE2020) is particularly ambitious with a maximum consumption of 100 kWh/m2 for all end-uses. Still, three quarters of the current building stock was built without building codes. As a result, and even with the great efforts made since year 2000, the average performance of the building stock in terms of energy consumption per m² is one of the worst in Europe. Today the potential for energy savings in these older buildings is huge while the building sector is one of the top priorities in the energy efficiency policy roadmap in the country. The specific building-related energy saving goals have been set in the Energy Transition Act of 2015: 28% reduction of final energy consumption in 2050 compared to 2012 level; retrofit of 500,000 existing dwellings each year, of which half should be occupied by vulnerable consumers. The French government offers a mix of policy regulation, incentives and support targeting both residential and commercial buildings, for instance:

Transport

Cars accounted for 58% of the sector’s consumption and road freight transport for 33% in 2019. The remaining was split among rail (3%), bus (2%), domestic air transport (2%), motorcycles (1%), and inland waterways (1%).

The traffic of passengers has been slightly increasing since 2000 (by 0.5%/year). The increase in traffics has been higher in public transport (+1.7%/year for rail and +0.4%/year for buses) than for cars (+0.3%/year). This reflects a modal shift towards public transport.

On the contrary, the traffic of goods (measured in tonne-kilometre) increased by 0.3%/year from 2000 to 2019, with a significant decrease in rail traffic of goods (-3%/year), which led to a higher share of road in the total traffic (88% in 2019), i.e. a trend that goes against the expectation of policy makers.

Transport energy consumption was 1.7 Mtoe lower in 2019 than in 2000. This trend is due to the fact that energy savings (around 5.1 Mtoe) and the effect of modal shift (0.9 Mtoe) counterbalanced the effect of the growth in traffic of passengers (4.5 Mtoe).

In 2010, the National Engagement for Environment (ENE) enacted the accelerated development of non-road and non-air modes of transport. Ambitious objectives were set by this law: to reduce by 2020 the greenhouse gas emissions of the transport sector to the level recorded in 1990 and to increase the share of non-road and non-air modes to 25% by 2022 (from 14% in 2006). The policies implemented to achieve this objective are mainly based on two points: i) Support low emission means of transport (modal shift); ii) Improvement of the efficiency of the means of transport used.

Industry

Final energy consumption of industry decreased significantly between 2000 and 2019, by 1.3%/year on average, to stand at 28.9 Mtoe. Around 60% of consumption remain concentrated in 5 energy intensive branches, of which 23% in chemicals,15% in steel industry, 13% in non-metallic minerals, 7% in paper and 4% in non-ferrous metals industries. Chemical industry showed the biggest raise in its share from 17% to 23% over the period, which can be explained by the development of the petrochemical industry and the intensification of the use of plastics. 

Among the 5 energy intensive branches, the unit consumption of both cement and paper decreased by 1.2%/year. The steel industry, on the other hand, has experienced upward fluctuations, returning in 2019 to a level close to that of 2000.

Since 2000, most factors contributed to a decrease in industrial energy consumption (-7.9 Mtoe), of which the decrease in activity (-2.3 Mtoe), structural changes towards less energy-intensive branches (-1.3 Mtoe) and, mainly, energy savings (-6.1 Mtoe). These effects are partly offset by other effects (+1.8 Mtoe). Since the economic crisis in 2008, energy savings have had a much lower impact because of a lower renewal rate of equipment and inefficient operations.

The French policy in terms of energy efficiency in the industrial sector focuses on five points: market instruments (in particular the EU emission trading scheme); financial incentive measures; regulatory measures, in particular within the framework of the transposition of the Energy Efficiency Directive (2012/27/EU); support to these normalisation procedures and qualification; support to the development of more energy-efficient technologies, in particular for the development of future investments systems.