“You can't air-condition the street in the middle of summer when it's 30 degrees Celsius, and you can't heat the terraces at full capacity in the middle of winter for the simple pleasure of drinking your coffee on the terrace. In a word, the Minister of Ecology, Barbara Pompili, buried the concept of heated terraces on Monday. From winter 2021, brazier systems and other radiators propelling heat onto open terraces will be banned in France.
This is one of the flagship measures announced this morning at the end of the Ecological Defense Council and it was one of the recommendations of the 150 French people gathered within the Citizens' Convention to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. from France.
In Paris alone, no less than 12,500 establishments would have heated terraces. The elected environmentalists of the capital, in particular the former EELV mayor of the 2nd arrondissement Jacques Boutault, have been campaigning for years for the disappearance of this very energy-consuming equipment whose carbon footprint is catastrophic. "A single heated terrace of 12 m2 emits as much Co2 as an SUV-type 4x4 which would drive 350 kilometers every day", calculated the elected official.
A measure already effective in some large cities
According to a calculation made by the environmental association Negawatt, a 75 m2 terrace equipped with five gas braziers emits as much CO2 on the scale of a winter as a new car driving 120,000 km!
"It is an ecological aberration which does not go at all in the direction of energy sobriety and which poses a big problem of overconsumption", one recognizes in the office of the Minister of Ecology. Without waiting for the state to legislate, some cities had taken the lead, such as Rennes (Ille-et-Vilaine) which decided to ban patio heating devices, deeming them harmful for the planet. Others, like Angers or Bordeaux, had started to reflect on the subject.
But Paris was resisting. "We started this fight in 2008 and relaunched our request for a ban last winter, but we had suffered a lot of criticism and jeers," Jacques Boutault recalls. So today, of course, we are taking our revenge and we are happy to have been right too soon. "
Worried smokers and restaurateurs
According to a study carried out in December by the Yougov institute, more than two in three French people agree that heated terraces represent a significant loss of energy, but only one in three is clearly "in favor" of this ban.
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Among cigarette addicts, who no longer have the opportunity to smoke inside establishments, 82% admit to using these places more or less frequently in the winter to legally grill one while drinking their little black. Suffice to say that among this category of clientele and among the owners of bars and restaurants, this ban is rather frowned upon: 57% of coffee cigarette lovers considered seven months ago that this is not an "essential measure".
