France treading carefully on gas boiler ban following German debacle

Prime Minister Élisabeth Borne has sketched a timetable to ban the sale of new gas boilers in France but decision-makers are treading carefully as some fear the government may face similar difficulties as Germany with its own phase-out plan.

Read the original French story here.

To decarbonise their economies, EU member states must massively electrify their energy systems. In the emissions-intensive building sector, this will involve a switch from fossil-fuel heating, particularly gas, to electric heat pump systems – something France is currently looking into.

In neighbouring Germany, however, recent debates on the subject have caused a government crisis after the Green Economy and Climate Minister Robert Habeck proposed bringing forward the phaseout date for new gas boiler sales by one year – from 2025 to 2024.

While the Socialist-Green-Liberal government in Germany initially planned the phase-out date for 2025, the liberal FDP party, backed by some Social Democrats (SDP) and the opposition Christian Democrats (CDU-CSU), managed to push back the timetable to 2028.

“The project was well-intentioned in terms of climate policy, but the economic and social impact has been devastating”, German Finance Minister and FDP leader Christian Lindner explained at the beginning of March.

But according to researcher Andreas Rudinger from the sustainability think-tank IDDRI, this is not because Germans have suddenly become climate sceptics.

“The situation in Germany is due more to a political coup by the liberals against the ecologists than to a reaction by the population to the measures announced by the coalition,” he told EURACTIV France.

French debate taking a German turn?

For sure, the German debate is watched with attention in France, particularly since Prime Minister Borne announced in May a phaseout plan for gas boilers in new buildings starting in 2026.

Asked whether the French initiative was influenced by events in Germany, Renaissance MP Antoine Armand told EURACTIV that the debate “is still premature in France”.

However, since Borne’s announcement, those in favour of a more balanced gas-electricity mix have formed a united front, while Economy Minister Bruno Le Maire has voiced his disapproval of the ban on gas boilers.

It would be “a bad idea, which will cause a great deal of concern among our most modest compatriots”, Le Maire told TV channel LCI on Sunday (9 July).

To avoid a setback, Armand conceded, “some lessons can already be learned from the stormy debate in Germany,” particularly regarding social justice.

Opposition set to defeat Germany’s proposed 2024 boiler ban

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Another Yellow Vest movement?

“We must be vigilant about the consequences that hasty decisions, such as ending gas boilers too quickly, could have on the daily lives of households and energy prices”, the MP said, referring to the carbon tax proposal that triggered the Yellow Vest movement in France in 2018.

Fears of a Yellow Vest repeat is also something the Greens and right-wing party Les Républicains (LR) highlighted in a joint Senate report on the effectiveness of public policies on energy renovation, published on 5 July.

In their report, the two senators stressed that more public support is needed for energy-efficient renovation of buildings, saying that a “political consensus” is emerging around the issue.

In response, Borne announced in an interview on Saturday (8 July) that the government would invest an extra €7 billion a year in the green transition, including on housing renovation.

The aim is to increase the number of deep renovations from the current 60,000-70,000 per year to a total of 200,000 annually from 2024 onwards, said Antoine Pellion, the man in charge of ecological planning for the prime minister.

With these targets in mind, it would seem that the government is safe from a political crisis even if some continue to oppose the phase-out.

Yet, Energy Transition Minister Agnès Pannier-Runacher insists that gas boilers will be phased out sooner or later, even if “gradually”. The minister made this point clear after the opening of a heat pump manufacturing plant in the Pas-de-Calais region, the same day she organized a visit of a methanisation plant in the same region.

France is the leading manufacturer of heat pumps in Europe and the third largest producer of biogas in Europe, behind Germany.

Boiler wars: German spat over fossil heating ban comes to Brussels

A proposed EU-wide ban on new fossil heating systems as of 2029 is hanging in the balance as a German spat over boilers spilld over into Brussels, presenting European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen with a tough choice. 

[Edited by Frédéric Simon/Zoran Radosavljevic]

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