The challenge of low-carbon real estate in an era of energy sobriety

As initiated by the law on the acceleration of the production of renewable energies promulgated last March, it is essential to remove real estate RE from the legislative blind spot. A well-known issue for Aire Nouvelle, the low-carbon real estate development and promotion subsidiary of Equans France, most recently at the initiative of launching the ENR&R booster, a collective presented at SIBCA on September 21. Made up of 16 major real estate players and supported by ADEME, its members have given themselves 3 years to transform the real estate industry and systematize the integration of ENR&R, via a test & learn method and experience sharing. which will be deployed on 50 pioneering projects.

Where are we in the decarbonization of real estate?

The world of real estate is not immune to the revolution in sobriety and energy efficiency, but taking a step back from developments in the real estate market seems necessary. Two pieces of legislation are shaking up the way things are done. First, the Zero Net Artificialization law which questions land consumption and reduces the share of diffuse by directing the market towards urban and building renovation. Then, the RE2020 regulation which contributes to the evolution of this market, by particularly penalizing individual houses and sparsely populated collectives. The challenge of decarbonization fits into this context, which differs greatly from the evolution of the real estate market experienced over recent decades.

The regulations encourage virtuous trajectories to reduce the carbon footprint of buildings. All stakeholders are affected. On the one hand, project owners, who have performance obligations linked to new regulatory constraints. On the other hand, investors, encouraged by the European taxonomy, who today favor sustainable and labeled investments to increase their environmental requirements. Finally, operators, who, in a context of energy and economic crisis, are seeking by all means to converge their environmental and economic constraints. Despite these new impulses, real estate still represents 30% of France's carbon footprint. Significant progress has been made towards the decarbonization of real estate, but much remains to be done to achieve the objectives set by the Paris Climate Agreement.

A building and, a fortiori, an urban block, a neighborhood or a city, form plural systems in which many components interact, which complicates the transition. There is therefore a real need to develop an ambitious strategy for each real estate project. At Aire Nouvelle, we systematically study each file through the prism of our compass: energies, materials, but also biodiversity and mobility. For us, it is about taking a holistic but targeted environmental approach to meet our objectives.

How should we proceed to achieve the new objectives?

Energy sobriety is not self-supporting. Promoters must give themselves the means to achieve this. We believe in a matrix work methodology - consuming less, better and green - and we apply it to the four cardinal points of our compass mentioned above. There is a real challenge in dealing with these from the programming and architectural design, and in carrying the reflection through to the operation of the building, to perpetuate the environmental biases.

“Consume less”, that is to say use fewer resources whose use can be avoided. This means favoring rehabilitation to waste less energy-intensive raw materials. It also means designing bioclimatic, compact, and thus reducing energy consumption. It also means creating sections of the city integrating a wide variety of local shops and services to reduce travel distances and encourage soft mobility.

“Consuming better” means thinking about the circular economy. We need to think about material circularity through the reuse of materials, of course, but also energy circularity. It is a question of reducing losses by optimizing the design, recovering waste heat to power the building, using innovative technologies to monitor, manage and best adapt consumption. In terms of mobility, consuming better means encouraging the modal shift of residents by offering them services linked to public transport, shared mobility, soft mobility, etc.

“Consuming green” is synonymous with the development of renewable energies and recovery. It is absolutely necessary to take advantage of these available local energies, at a time when energy systems represent more than 50% of the carbon weight in the life cycle of real estate.

We are convinced at Aire Nouvelle – and Equans – that the control of energy and technical packages constitutes an essential lever for the decarbonization of our model to become a reality. It is by combining the strengths of each actor that the equation of carbon and energy sobriety, the place given to biodiversity and sustainable mobility solutions can be resolved.

Should the legal framework be changed?

In an inflationary energy context and tension on resources, real estate must do its part in terms of sobriety and the production of renewable energies. Current regulations are intended to be increasingly demanding and the context, although presenting a certain inertia, is favorable. First, a review of regulatory developments allows us to see the gigantic advances that have been made over the last few decades.

Since 1974, several thermal regulations have been put in place. Between 1974 and 2012, regulatory consumption was divided by 10... almost by 20 with the arrival of RE2020. For the first time with RE2020 - in force since January 1, 2022 - national regulations integrate an environmental indicator, namely the carbon impact, into the regulatory constraints applied to the building. This new rule is part of continuous and progressive action in favor of less energy-intensive and less carbon-intensive buildings. Today, we are observing the first feedback from RE2020 from specialized design offices. Their analyzes show that the average energy consumption of new buildings was reduced by around 40% with RE2020 compared to RT2012.

At the same time, the tertiary energy saving decree (DEET), published in July 2019, reinforces this dynamic by integrating the collection of detailed data on the energy consumption of buildings and by determining energy gain objectives in absolute and relative values. .

Although consumption has been considerably reduced, it is now renewable and recovery energies (ENR&R) in buildings that must be further encouraged.

At Aire Nouvelle, we believe that an energy balance must take into account all uses, and promote both self-consumed energy and the export of excess energy, electrical but also thermal.

In addition, it seems necessary to us to create and lead bodies of multiple energy and building stakeholders, reflecting on models of integration of these energies (technical, financial, legal), to strengthen the integration of renewable energies to real estate projects.

The latest law of March 10, 2023 relating to the acceleration of the production of renewable energies opens up first advances for the real estate sector such as the systematization of geothermal energy in the technical, economic and energy feasibility study carried out in upstream of the construction/renovation of a building. Another improvement, the integration of renewable energies into urban projects has been facilitated with simplified exemptions from the town planning code and increased consideration of ENR development objectives in the opinions of the Architect of Buildings of France. Finally, the obligation for solar equipment on roofs and parking lots was created and extended to existing facilities; and collective self-consumption has been extended to renewable gas and low-carbon hydrogen.

We need to go even further! It is by bringing together the sectors, by systematizing the use of renewable energy in buildings, by removing legal barriers, particularly on collective self-consumption, by creating obligations and financial incentives... that we will maintain the course of carbon reduction objectives real estate while significantly reducing energy bills for businesses and households. The ENR&R (Renewable and Recovery Energy) booster initiated by Aire Nouvelle, Contrast-e and A4MT during SIBCA on September 21 is a first step towards this objective, which I hope will inspire many others!

Tribune by Ludovic Mouly, Deputy General Director of Aire Nouvelle (LinkedIn).