Paying more for your water beyond a certain volume: the idea is gaining ground in France. This is the principle of progressive pricing, already in place in Dunkirk, Montpellier and Libourne. For a hotel or a landlord, using far more than an ordinary household, the arithmetic is worth pausing over.
Paying for water in bands
The principle is simple. Instead of a single price per cubic metre, the bill is divided into bands. The first volumes, covering basic uses such as drinking, cooking and washing, stay cheap and are sometimes free. Beyond thresholds set by the local authority, the price steps up with each band. In Dunkirk, which pioneered the approach, water is billed across three uses: “essential”, “useful” and “comfort”. The aim is not to charge more, but to encourage people to use less.
What the French Water Plan sets out
The movement goes back some way: the Brottes Act opened the door in 2013, and several cities have experimented since. Libourne was among the first, and Montpellier has applied its “eco-solidarity” pricing since January 2023. In March 2023 the French government accelerated matters with its Water Plan, which targets a 10% reduction in withdrawals by 2030 and invites local authorities to adopt these scales more widely. As Le Monde noted, each authority remains free to set its own bands: there is no national scale. And in June 2026 La Dépêche reported that, where it is applied, the pricing is proving its worth.
Progressive pricing is aimed primarily at domestic customers with an individual meter, and applies only to the drinking water portion of the bill, not to sewerage or taxes. The thresholds, and how professional use is treated, differ from one city to the next: the local water service rules are what count.
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Why heavy users pay the highest price
The logic quickly turns against those who use a lot: the higher the volume, the more the last cubic metre costs. A hotel, a student residence or an apartment building consumes on a scale no household matches, and therefore tips into the upper bands far more readily. As this pricing spreads, watching your consumption stops being a matter of image alone: it becomes a line on the bill.
The most profitable lever: the shower
The question is where to act. In a hotel as in a residence, hot water goes above all into showers. That is where the Molleaumètre comes in: a light ring informs the person while they shower, imposing nothing and taking nothing away from comfort. In the pilot run with Hénéo, consumption fell by 23% per shower, and by 15.5% on the residence main meter, with peaks of up to 61% among the heaviest users. Every one of those cubic metres comes off the most expensive bands first. And the saving is twofold: on the water billed, and on the energy spent heating it. On the management side, the dashboard tracks consumption room by room, home by home, and how it changes over time.
What remains is to put a figure on what this would mean for you. The savings calculator gives a first estimate in a few minutes.
Sources: Le Monde, on how progressive water pricing works (5 April 2023); La Dépêche, on progressive water pricing proving its worth (9 June 2026); franceinfo, report on progressive water pricing; the French government Water Plan (March 2023, target of 10% fewer withdrawals by 2030); average price of water and sewerage €4.69/m³ (SISPEA observatory, 2025 edition, 2023 data); Molleau x Hénéo pilot, RIVP group (13 Nov 2025 to 30 June 2026, 23% less per shower across 3,140 showers). Progressive pricing scales are set locally and vary by authority.