It’s a tough question to answer, but there is definitely a push toward more efficient gas technology in France, suggesting the country is ready for a switch. In our latest research as part of the Gas Heating Service, we covered this interesting market to find out about the evolving role of gas heating appliances in France.

The French market currently has an important share of gas heating (more than 40% of the dwelling stock) but it has not been a straight path. With the nuclear power programme for example, 70% of new homes built in the ‘70s received electric heating. Nowadays, gas heating represents more than 50% of new build. It’s clear gas has an important role and, from our latest research, we are certain of its future in the French market.

Last week academia and industry descended upon the sleepy Portuguese university town of Coimbra to wrangle over the means for encouraging energy efficiency through changing user-behaviour. 

Looking to move the discussion beyond age-old discussions about the end-user in isolation, Delta-ee attended Behave2016 to reflect upon the role of supply-side stakeholders in the push for improved energy efficiency behaviour.

Time flies. I first blogged about Thermondo in October 2014, pointing out how I believed it could shake up the German heating market. One and a half years later they are in the very early stages of doing precisely this, and recently raised €23.5M to drive their growth into, in their words, “an integrated energy company in a distributed world of energy”. I visited the company’s headquarters in Berlin last week and thought I’d share some of my latest thoughts in this blog.

I previously characterised Thermondo as disrupting the traditional route to market for heating systems, by offering a 21^st century way for customers to buy a new heating system and have it installed. They have been executing on precisely this over the last couple of years. Customers complete a survey and upload photographs of their heating system, receiving a firm quote from Thermondo whose software optimises the best solution for the customer. The company’s in-house installation teams across the country then carry out the installation. Thermondo is now installing thousands of heating systems a year in this way. The numbers are small in relation to the overall heating market: their challenge now is to get to scale, and as you’ll see below, broaden their offering.