Many local communities have followed suit

The year 2011 be the energy performance contract (CPE) In a few days, lawyer Olivier Ortega will make the Government a very optimistic report on the potential of the CPE. New business models for industrial construction and energy, financial tool innovative for homeowners, this family of contracts has only 20 of achievements in the private sector and a handful in the public. It is yet in the rehabilitation of public tertiary Park that PBS is the most anticipated. The State has become the energy retrofit of 50 million square metres of its buildings and the round table encourages communities to do the same in their 70 million square metres. A market of EUR 24 billion over 10 years just for the State, investment that the round table is considering to lift by tools such as the PBS.

For a period of twenty years, the first large-scale public-private contract was signed a year ago by the Regional Council of Alsace and Cofely, a subsidiary of GDF Suez. The claimant is committed to lowering of 35 primary energy of 14 schools Bill. On a smaller scale, Montluçon succeeded with Dalkia to achieve the planned work (EUR 2 million) on 93 communal buildings that remain managed by the company ten years. The Centre region has signed with Eiffage to 18 high schools. These experiments confirm speed of realization that the CPE. "You win one to two years from a public book master", provides Patrick Laugier, to Cofely.

For Laurent Chanussot, expert CPE regional agency of energy and the environment of Rhône-Alpes, a community services are unable to for such delay. For energy savings, which constitute the purpose, it is still too early to confirm, but Olivier Ortega said up to 40 the potential decrease in expenses (heating, air conditioning, etc.) that offer the CPE. For Thierry Collin, Director of the departmental heritage of the channel, which is preparing to sign an energy performance contract, it must wait three years to check the relevance of the approach.

These promises are of great interest in local communities, in particular with regard to school, considered extremely buildings "energy". However, several brakes hold signatures. PBS has no appropriate legal definition and Governments must adapt two approaches, the procurement or public-private partnership (PPP). Governments are reluctant to resort to the first, fearing the dislike of his code to global markets (principle of allotment, deferred payments, control of single book). The PPP, he allows to escape the public markets, but the process is cumbersome and time-consuming, confirmed Patrick Laugier, who practised it in Alsace. "It is only for amounts exceeding 30 or 50 million euros, not for the rehabilitation of the town hall building," he said.

Another reluctance, the communities and their technical services see this privatization of public action a threat against their prerogatives, but sometimes also the questioning of a real skill acquired over the years. With the complexity of the subject, Laurent Chanussot advises communities that it helps to first define a strategy of renovation of their parks following a thermal audit. And then, in a second time, to decide on which case use the PBS in partnership, market public PBS or the multiannual programming of investment.

Many local communities have followed suit. The channel must retain this week a claimant for the management on fifteen years of 20 colleges and 3 museums (i.e. EUR 20 million of investment-38 of consumption) of the Department. Paris, on the other hand, began the tender for the reduction of 30 of the energy consumption of 600 schools.

Remains a paradox that shocked the specialists: communities have started well before the State, which has not signed a single PBS while obligations.