Member states push for faster decarbonisation of heating and cooling

On Wednesday (15 May), 15 EU countries published a joint working document calling on the European Commission to prioritise the decarbonisation of heating and cooling, to increase the EU’s energy independence and meet its climate targets.

The key actions the 15 countries asked the Commission to undertake include the publication of the long-awaited Heat Pump Action Plan and a revision of the 2016 EU Heating and Cooling Strategy, bringing it in line with the upcoming 2040 climate targets.

“The EU needs to develop a concrete plan to rapidly increase the use of the different renewable energy technologies (…) such as solar district heating plants, heat pumps (including heat pumps using ambient energy from wastewater and other sources) and especially large-scale industrial heat pumps that need to be integrated into district heating systems” states the document sent to the Commission.

According to the signatory member states, such a strategy would make an important contribution to Europe’s energy security.

Reacting to the move Danish Socialist Member of the European Parliament (MEP) Niels Fuglsang, said that heating and cooling are massive users of fossil fuel, noting that the EU sent around €8 billion to Russia for LNG last year. He called for Europe “to break free from this dependency.”

Indeed, heating and cooling is one of Europe’s main energy-consuming sectors.

According to the European Commission’s Joint Research Centre (JRC), replacing 30 million individual fossil fuel boilers in residential homes with heat pumps would reduce the EU’s gas and oil consumption by 36%.

Aurélie Beauvais, managing director of Euroheat & Power, summed up in a press release, that “accelerating the scale-up of efficient clean heat solutions, such as district heating and cooling, is the best industrial strategy to retain our leadership in these high-value technologies, whilst strengthening the EU’s security of supply.”

When asked by Euractiv about the next steps, the European Commission replied that “an action plan on heat pumps is currently being drawn up and has been the subject of intense stakeholder engagement. At this stage, the exact timetable for the plan has not yet been decided.”

The EU has already updated its regulatory framework for clean heating solutions over the past five years under the auspices of the Green Deal. New directives have been adopted on the energy performance of buildings, energy efficiency, and renewable energy.

[Edited by Donagh Cagney/Rajnish Singh]

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