A quick overview of what a heat pump is
Also called PAC, a heat pump does not use any fossil fuels, i.e. coal, natural gas, oil, but uses calories from the air, ground or water to heat buildings. Transported by a refrigerant, these calories will pass through a compressor, an evaporator, a condenser and finally an expansion valve which all need electricity.
This heating system hardly emits CO2 unlike oil or gas heating, but you should know that the refrigerant is very harmful to the environment. Fortunately, it works in a closed circuit!
Why rely on heat pumps?
If the Government is focusing on heat pumps, it is because this high-performance means of heating consumes little energy and is considered to be 3 times more ecological than traditional heating systems, can significantly reduce greenhouse gas emissions and reduce the bill amount energy of its users.
Heat pumps therefore fit perfectly into the framework of ecological transition the acceleration of which the President of the Republic announced on September 25, 2023 with a new roadmap for the ecological planning project in France. He obviously mentioned the problem of energy-intensive housing and underlined the fact that an effort would be made on the production and installation of heat pumps.
State of play
In 2022, more than 2.6 million air/water heat pumps have been installed and 700,000 air/air heat pumps have been sold. Currently, Europe has 170 heat pump production sites, 32 of which are in France belonging to around ten manufacturers, of which only 3 are purely French companies.
Faced with ever-increasing demand, this handful of manufacturers present on French soil is far from sufficient. It is therefore currently necessary to import large numbers from abroad. It is on this last point that the President of the Republic wishes to act.
Towards a sector of heat pumps manufactured in France
At the European Union level, the heat pump is seen as a strategic industrial sector. It is for this reason that as part of the Government’s ecological planning, Emmanuel Macron announced that he wanted triple the production of heat pumps in France by 2027, which would correspond to the production of 1 million devices per year.
According to players in the sector, this ambition deserves to be applauded, but in current conditions, it seems complicated to achieve by 2027, but more feasible for 2030. In the immediate future, we must, as a priority, focus on relocation of a certain number of elements today manufactured in Asia.
We must also not forget that the production of these heat pumps must be monitored by their installers. Thus, the question of labor arises to the extent that 20,000 installers and 10,000 maintainers are needed. To provide a response to this problem, the president also announced the training of a significant number of installers.
A heat pump, but in housing with insulation
Although heat pumps allow you to spend less and are a real ecological asset, they are not enough. Indeed, home insulation has an important role to play. This is why the State will add 1.6 billion euros to aid to enable energy renovation. The budget will then be increased to 5 billion euros.
200,000 renovations including heating and insulation are hoped for next year. All this work having a considerable cost, numerous aids are put in place like Primesenergie.fr or MaPrimeRénov’. However, to multiply demands by 3, the heat pump would have to be made even more attractive, which seems difficult to achieve with all the aid already in place.