The following information has been gathered as part of the CONCERTO Premium policy research.

Benefits of CONCERTO:

More than 1,000 people participated, covering the various targets groups: decision makers and employees of the local authorities, developers, planners and architects, construction companies and craftsmen, students, end-users and local facilitators. Frenchenvironment agency ADEME and Ville de Nantes collaborated to host 2 high level training sessions on the design of very-low energy buildings and very energy-efficient refurbishment projects. EEach was attended by about 150 people.

Barriers encountered:

Administrative barriers: 

• lack of cooperation and acceptance between departments within the public administration
• Need for complementary human resources to coordinate and apply ambitious climate and energypolicies at a greater scale and to motivate all local actors to join the initiative

Social barriers:

An issue the project had to deal with was the high level of fuel poverty. To prevent fuel poverty, public policies need to develop a more sensitive way of identifying the conditions of damaged dwellings, as this can potentially be a source of insecurity. Skills for identifying and addressing the treatment of these questions need to be improved amongst those in charge of social aid and welfare funds, associations, energy suppliers, directorship and services of local authorities with responsibility for habitat, housing, urban planning, energy, environment. It is crucial to control the price of housing within the ‘Île de Nantes’ district and to make sure that low income households can continue to live in the neighbourhood in good quality housing. In order to optimise the Nantes Métropole Fund for the energy performance in social housing, the administration, the promotion and the monitoring of the fund need to be coordinated better. Energy targets should be more comprehensive. The relationship between Nantes Métropole and the social housing companies concerning energy performances in buildings must be strengthened. Some other institutions should be associated (representatives of the social housing sector, ADEME, the French Government). This renewed relationship could pursue 2 objectives:

• accompany changes in the professional practices by promoting the cross-exchange of information, feedback, etc.
• co-ordinate the relevant monitoring tools to qualify energy performance and the supporting information vectors to raise tenants awareness.

Success factors identified:

Institutional success factors:

Energy performance requirements have been specified in documents included in real estate sales contracts and included in the specification requirements. This was legally possible once urban developer SAMOA owned the land, as it is majority owned by public institutions (Ville de Nantes and Nantes Métropole). SAMOA had to report on energy performance levels to the local project coordinator responsible for the CONCERTO financial support (Nantes Métropole). Where the land did not belong to SAMOA, as was the case with half of Ile de Nantes, measures had to be implemented on a voluntary basis or thanks to a proactive attitude on the side of SAMOA.

CONCERTO added value: - energy requirements which set both technical targets (U value, cut in conventional energy consumption) and organisational standards (energy experts must be associated; architects, mission of thermal control carried out by an independent company, feasibility studies to reach higher energy standards)

Developer and energy expert SEM.SPLA were in dialogue with building developers regarding energy.

Other:

Although the completion of some objectives has encountered delays, the trend on standard achievement out-performs the CONCERTO average due to the new French low energy consumption in buildings standard which has cut the regulatory standard for energy consumption by 50% since 2005.

Legacy – follow-on projects:

In terms of replication, the use of the public local development company named “SAMOA”, allows for the extension of the CONCERTO working perimeter to the entire “Ile de Nantes” district area. Furthermore, outputs of the act2-project aim to accompany a general upgrade of Nantes Métropole urban and energy policies. The French Government recognised “Prairie au Duc de l’Ile de Nantes” (a sector of the Ile de Nantes under deep renewal) as an eco-district and the metropolitan area “Nantes Saint-Nazaire” as an “eco-city”.