Heero, a fintech specializing in energy renovation, analyzed French people’s internet searches. It shows that the cold and the geopolitical context have accelerated the French’s awareness of the issues related to insulation and heating.
The price of heating is one of the French’s primary concerns. Heero, a fintech specializing in energy renovation, has analyzed* the searches of the French on the Internet to understand their interest, their questions and their obstacles in relation to energy renovation. Heero analyzed the development of French search trends on Google about bonuses, heating prices, different types of energy or even DPE (energy performance diagnosis) since 2006, when the first aid for energy renovation, i.e. more than 15 years of hindsight.
In particular, it shows that, in terms of aid, there is a greater interest in these mechanisms from 2010, no doubt in connection with the mobilization of the public authorities (Grenelle II of the environment, the creation of the RGE in 2011), although first aid was implemented in 2006, and even more research in recent years with the introduction of new bonuses.
“Requests for energy support and bonuses have thus increased by 650% over the past 5 years, with a peak for MapremeRénov’ in January 2021, when it was extended to all residents and all incomes. On the other hand, by comparison at In view of the lower amount of research regarding it, the CEE unit (Energy Savings Certificate, ed note) seems to remain unknown despite its age, the first period started in 2006 for the French obliged (2006-2010)”, specifies Hero .
Record number of price searches
In terms of energy prices, Heero notes an undeniable dominance of the “fuel price” query, although only 11% of homes were heated this way in 2020, according to the latest data from the Ministry of Ecological Transition. Several search peaks can be observed: in 2020 during the first lockdown, when people by definition stayed at home and therefore consumed more, but also in March 2022, in connection with the explosion in energy prices (+29.2% over a year in March 2022 according to INSEE) ; then in September last year, a month when the energy price still rose by 17.8% over a year according to INSEE. Searches reached an all-time high in November 2022 with more than 200,000 searches per month.
“Analyzing the regional differences, we note that the “price of heating” is a national concern for the French, with an increase in search volume of 500% between the end of June and the end of September 2022, while the increase in the price of heating oil specifically concerns more the inhabitants of the northern zone and is where the volumes of this research are higher”, notes Florianne Marandel, data scientist at Heero, responsible for the study.
Heero notes a recent increase, related to the current energy context, in searches for “price of wood” or “electricity”. Even searches for “the price of pills”, although a minority in terms of volume (1100 searches per month), peaked in September, when their price rose to more than 500 euros per pill. ton, against 300 euros in July. 2021. Again, this concern seems heightened for the northeastern quarter of France.
*”Method: analysis performed by Heero’s audience and data team via Google Trends, a tool that allows the extraction of trends for searches performed in the Google engine. The data is weighted to cover the values from 0 to 100 in the geographic area and in the selected period. In order to best cover the topics of this study, a large number of queries and semantic variations were analyzed and it was chosen to track those presenting the most significant trends as well as volumes of searches. These were obtained using Ahrefs, an SEO analysis tool.