Alpes-Maritimes grants: what the Département pays on top of MaPrimeRénov'

Almost every guide to French renovation grants stops at the national schemes. MaPrimeRénov' and CEE are the two everyone names, and for a good number of owners on this coast they are also the two that pay least. There is a third layer that exists because of where your property sits rather than because it is in France, and the Alpes-Maritimes runs one of the more generous versions of it. The headline figure is 25,400 EUR.

It comes with a condition that rules out a large share of the people reading this, so that is where this guide starts rather than where it ends.

Who can actually claim a local grant in the Alpes-Maritimes?

Owners who live in the property as their main home. That is the gate on nearly every scheme described below, and it is worth being blunt about it because the wording on the official pages is easy to skim past.

The departmental règlement asks for a property "occupé à titre de résidence principale" by the owner at the date of application, evidenced by the electoral roll, an insurance policy marked as a principal residence, a notarial deed or a tax notice. The national test underneath it, which most local top-ups inherit from ANAH, is occupation for at least eight months a year, checkable within a year of your final payment request, plus a commitment to keep living there for three years afterwards.

Landlords are in, on a different basis: the tenant has to occupy it as their principal residence, and the letting commitment runs six years with a clawback of one sixth for each year you fall short. Owners of a second home are out of almost everything, and the exceptions are short enough to list, which is what the section below does.

One quirk worth knowing if you are close to a band boundary: the Département deducts your annual mortgage repayments from your revenu fiscal de référence before deciding which income band you fall into. That is unusual and it moves some households down a band.

How much does the Département 06 pay for a full energy renovation?

The scheme is the Guichet Confort Énergie 06, run under the Département's Green Deal 06 umbrella. For a qualifying renovation it pays, by income band:

• Très modestes: up to 25,400 EUR
• Modestes: up to 20,400 EUR
• Intermédiaires: up to 16,600 EUR
• Supérieurs: up to 10,000 EUR

That last line is the surprising one. MaPrimeRénov' pays higher-income households nothing at all through its par geste route, so a well-off owner in Nice or Valbonne is used to being told they fall outside every scheme. The Département still pays them 10,000 EUR. If you have been assuming there is nothing for you because the national portal said so, this is the page to act on.

The money is calculated on what you are left paying after all other public aid, and it can be split into two applications across five years. An energy audit is compulsory and has to be less than 18 months old, carried out by a Mon Accompagnateur Rénov' professional, with 700 EUR of the audit cost covered in every band.

The work has to clear a real bar. You need a 35% improvement in energy performance and you have to reach class D or better, though the gain requirement drops to 20% if the property lands on class B. The building must be more than 15 years old, sit entirely within the department, and be a house or a village house of no more than three storeys. Your contractor must hold RGE certification, with one unusual escape hatch: the service can waive it in writing if you demonstrate that no RGE firm was available to you.

Why the fossil-heating grant is worth more than its headline figure

Replacing an oil or gas system with something that is not fossil-fuelled has its own grant, paying 12,700 EUR at the très modestes band down to 5,000 EUR at the top. Those numbers look modest next to the renovation grant until you read how they are calculated.

The departmental payment equals the sum of the national aid and the CEE you received, capped by your band. It does not add a fixed amount on top. It roughly doubles what you already secured elsewhere, which means the harder you work on the national and CEE side, the more the Département pays you for it.

There is no minimum energy gain here and no 15-year age rule, but the Mon Accompagnateur Rénov' audit is still compulsory. Eligible equipment covers wood and pellet boilers, solar heating, air-to-water and geothermal heat pumps, low-temperature radiators, a smart thermostat, and removal of the old tank. One exclusion catches people out on this coast: air-to-air heat pumps do not qualify for this particular grant, despite being the most commonly installed system in the Alpes-Maritimes. They can count towards the renovation grant above, but only where the system being replaced had no water circuit and at least one other measure is done at the same time.

Which Alpes-Maritimes grants have no income condition?

Four of them, which makes these the ones worth checking first if your income puts you outside the national schemes:

• Solar water heating: 25% of the cost excluding tax, capped at 300 EUR per square metre of collector, up to around 1,000 EUR. Collectors have to total at least 2 m² and the installer must hold RGE certification. This is the surviving solar grant at departmental level.
• Private EV charge point: 50% of the cost excluding tax, capped at 400 EUR. The installer must be IRVE-qualified and a reinforced socket does not count. File within six months of the invoice.
• Charge point in a copropriété: 400 EUR per parking space, covering your share of the collective infrastructure rather than the charger itself.
• Rainwater collection tank: 50% of the cost excluding tax, up to 5,000 EUR, for a buried tank or one inside an existing structure, 3,000 litres minimum.

There is a fifth if your property is inland. The aide à l'amélioration de l'habitat rural pays 20% of the work up to 1,600 EUR, for owner-occupiers in the department's rural and mountain communes, with the coastal strip excluded. The building has to be over 20 years old and the work over 500 EUR. It carries no income ceiling and, unusually, no RGE requirement, which makes it one of the easier grants to actually use on an older house above Grasse.

What can a second-home owner on the Côte d'Azur actually claim?

Three things, and only one of them concerns energy.

• The rainwater tank grant, 50% up to 5,000 EUR. The règlement names résidences secondaires explicitly, which almost nothing else does.
• The copropriété charge point grant, 400 EUR per space. Its wording is "en résidence principale ou non", so an apartment you use for part of the year qualifies.
• The Cannes façade grant, if the property is in Cannes and visible from the street. It has no residence test, no income test and no age condition. Standard sectors pay 9 EUR per m² for paint, 26 for a full render and 8 for hydrogommage, capped at 8,000 EUR. The Suquet, Forville, Meynadier and Bas Carnot sectors pay 11, 30 and 12, capped at 10,500. A separate operation covering Les Caravelles, Concorde and La Joie de Vivre runs from January 2026 to the end of 2028 at doubled rates, capped at 21,000 EUR. It funds render and paint rather than energy performance, but it is real money and second-home owners can have it.

Everything else falls away for the same structural reason. Local top-ups are calculated on the works base that ANAH will subsidise, so when you fail the principal-residence test at national level, the local money attached to it goes too. That is worth understanding before you spend an afternoon on application forms.

CEE is the one national scheme that does not care where you live, and it applies to second homes on the same terms as anything else. If you own a holiday property here, CEE is the funding conversation to have with your installer.

Why buying the equipment early costs you the grant

For departmental aid, the work must not start and no equipment may be purchased until your file has been received and approved. The same rule applies to the Pays de Grasse scheme. It is the single most common way people disqualify themselves, because the natural order of a renovation is to find a system you like, order it, and sort the paperwork while you wait for delivery.

Do it the other way round. Get the audit, get the quote, lodge the file, wait for the decision, then let your contractor order anything. The delay is frustrating and it is cheaper than losing five figures.

Which local grants are still advertised but no longer exist?

Several, and installer websites are slow to update, so it is worth knowing what to discount when someone quotes you a figure.

• Departmental solar panel aid ended on 28 February 2025. Only files with a quote predating that were paid. Green Deal 06 itself is very much alive, which is why the confusion persists, but the photovoltaic component within it is gone. Solar water heating survived; solar electricity did not.
• Région Sud's Chèque énergie durable is no longer offered. Its page now redirects to a generic regional page and it is absent from the region's full catalogue of current schemes.
• The 6,000 EUR Métropole Nice Côte d'Azur heat pump figure that circulates online traces back to a 2022 announcement whose page no longer exists. The Métropole does top up ANAH grants with its own money, and says so, but publishes no amount, no percentage and no eligibility grid anywhere public. Treat any specific figure you are quoted as unverified until the Maison de l'Habitant confirms it in writing.
• Six ANAH programmed operations across the department have closed and are still being promoted, including the Métropole Nice Côte d'Azur scheme that ended in 2023 and the Cannes Pays de Lérins one that ended in 2022. Nice, Cannes, Antibes and the Sophia Antipolis belt currently have no live programmed operation at all, which is most of the coast.

Two schemes are genuinely running: an OPAH covering fifteen communes around Menton and the eastern border until February 2027, and one covering the historic centre of Grasse until October 2027, limited to a defined list of streets.

Related pages

• MaPrimeRénov' explained: who qualifies and how to claim
• MaPrimeRénov' for non-French speakers
• CEE grants: the scheme that does not ask where you live
• RGE certification: the contractor qualification these grants require
• Energy decisions for second-home owners on the Côte d'Azur
• ANAH: the agency behind MaPrimeRénov'
• Audit énergétique: the assessment these grants require