On the capitalization of energy labels on the French housing market

Résumé 0

The building sector in France accounts for nearly a third of national emissions and energy consumption, necessitating energy retrofits and renovations to align with the government's emission reduction targets. Energy Performance Certificates (EPCs), play crucial roles in guiding this transformation. This paper explores the market capitalization of home energy labels in mainland France. Including spatial and dynamism heterogeneity and using public data on energy efficiency and property transfers, the results show that top ranked dwellings have an average 14\% significant premium compared to middle rank ones. The bottom ranked houses are priced 6\% lower than middle rank ones. In the case of apartments however, the results for bottom ranks are mitigated and un-significant in most cases. The premium seems to be higher in magnitude in bigger and more dynamic cities. Overall, the results may suggest that more specific data at a thin granularity may be required in order to increase the quality of prediction, especially in capturing heterogeneity.