Investigation published in Lyon Mag (original title: « La clim est une machine, son accès est une politique ») on 9 August 2026, on unequal access to air conditioning in Lyon and heat-related mortality. A piece of field reporting and fact-checking, not an opinion column.

Mortality, in numbers

Between 17 June and 2 July 2026, the heatwave caused at least 5,764 excess deaths (+36%) according to Santé publique France, two-thirds of them among people aged 75 and over. The sharpest rise was at home: +91% in the single week of 22–28 June. Research has converged for twenty years, from Bouchama (2007) to a large Ontario study published in JAMA Internal Medicine: air conditioning in the bedroom protects; the shared cooled room on the ground floor mandated by French law does not.

A tax system that widens the gap

Same appliance, two treatments. Up to €5,000 in renovation subsidies for a standalone air-to-water heat pump, nothing for its air-to-air equivalent unless bundled into a large-scale renovation. VAT at 5.5% for a fixed reversible unit installed by a company, 20% for the portable unit — the only appliance a tenant can access without works or a landlord’s approval, and the most energy-hungry.

No one clearly in charge

Six metropolitan portfolios touch on heat — health, elderly care, climate adaptation, planning, housing, housing supply — and none of them owns it. At the City of Lyon, planning and housing have been a Metropolis competency since 2015: the municipality’s room for manoeuvre on the existing private housing stock, where most of the problem sits, is structurally limited.

→ Read the investigation in Lyon Mag