Since Tuesday 3 November, France's Heat Fund (Fonds chaleur) is no longer taking new applications for investment aid. The cabinet of the Ministry for Ecological Transition confirmed the suspension to AFP, Energynews reported on 10 November. No end date has been given, no decree or press release formalises the step, and the rules for deciding which projects come first once the window reopens do not exist yet.
The fund is run by ADEME and has been the main state support for renewable and recovered heat since 2009: biomass, surface and deep geothermal, solar thermal, waste heat recovery, and heating and cooling networks. It works on a rolling basis - ADEME reviews each file and commits aid within the annual envelope set in the finance law.
€1.8 billion asked for, €500 million on the table
The arithmetic explains the stop. According to ThinkGeoEnergy, ADEME's president put the stock of aid applications at €1.8 billion, against a Heat Fund budget of €500 million for 2027, down from €800 million in each of 2025 and 2026. Energynews adds that the envelope sits in a finance bill still before Parliament, so the window closed before lawmakers had voted.
What ADEME has said, as relayed by the two outlets:
- the fund has not been abolished;
- multi-year agreements already signed with local authorities are not called into question;
- aid for preliminary studies can still be requested;
- files submitted before the suspension stay in the queue, without a guarantee of the amount hoped for.
The first communication spoke of heating and cooling networks; the specialist press reads the freeze as covering the whole investment window. ADEME's president said the pause is to be used to redefine priorities within the smaller budget, and that the results will go to the supervisory bodies, the prime minister's office and the agency's board. Associations of local elected officials had written to the prime minister after the planned cut became known in September, asking for the fund to be kept at its level or raised.
What happens to a project that is half designed
The geothermal plant at Safran's Villaroche site, which we covered yesterday, was built with Heat Fund support. A project whose file went in before 3 November keeps moving, though perhaps with less grant than its business plan assumed. One that was a few weeks from filing now waits for rules nobody has seen.
In practice that tends to push design teams towards phasing. The energy centre and the first branch get built, later streets are left as stubs, and substations are ordered in batches instead of in one contract. For the equipment, two things are worth writing into the specification now: frames and connections that can take more plates when the next phase is released, and a clear statement of the temperatures the network will run at in its final state as well as in phase one. A gasketed plate heat exchanger is forgiving about the first; nobody can fix the second after the pipes are in the ground.
Owners with waste heat to offer - a factory, a data centre, an incinerator - should expect longer talks. The study money is still there, so the sensible move is to finish the study.
Sources: Energynews, ThinkGeoEnergy
