Heating & cooling Archives

Women have always been among those most affected by energy poverty, but the COVID-19 pandemic and the energy crisis have exacerbated inequalities and widened the gender divide, according to the European Parliament's committee on women’s rights.

A draft law to ban the installation of new oil and gas heaters from next year has sparked outrage in Germany, adding fuel to continued government infighting in Berlin between the Greens and the Liberals.

Opening the door to hybrid heat pumps and hydrogen boilers will impact consumers, and make it more difficult for them to transition to clean heating while increasing energy costs, argues Monique Goyens. 

New emergency permitting rules tabled by the European Commission just over a week ago would concern only “new” renewable energy projects and fail to address the hundreds of gigawatts currently stuck in the administrative pipeline, industry sources say.

To meet the German target of six million heat pumps by 2030, upcoming government support for consumer gas and electricity bills will include a special provision for heat pumps so as not to upset those who already invested in them.

The heat pump industry, the new darling of the German government, must grow rapidly to achieve the 2024 target of beginning the installation of 500,000 pumps a year, which Berlin is happy to assist in.

Faced with an energy crisis, the European Commission has presented an emergency regulation to speed up permitting processes across the EU, which has already drawn criticism for not including district heating and industrial-size heat pumps.

As Europe looks to reach climate neutrality by 2050, it must quickly clamp down on  fluorinated gases, a super-warming gas used mainly in air conditioning and refrigeration but also in green technologies like heat pumps.

In recent years, energy companies operating large combined heat and power plants were looking to switch from coal to gas as a stepping stone towards decarbonisation. Now, soaring gas prices have put question marks over how to lower emissions from these energy and heat-producing installations.

Coal is a vital source of energy in Poland, and not just for electricity production since 46% of households heat their homes with the highly-polluting fuel. But as prices for lignite skyrocket, the country’s green transition is receiving a welcome boost.

Gas rationing may not be necessary this winter if European industries succeed to rein in their fossil gas usage and quickly find ways of ramping up electrification, according to a new report.

The new UK energy secretary Jacob Rees-Mogg envisions the use of hydrogen in heating homes, something energy experts and scientists strongly advise against.

The German government has announced the start of a €3 billion subsidy scheme put in place until 2026 that will support the construction of district heating grids that use at least 75% renewable energy.

Burning hydrogen instead of gas to heat homes and water could double consumer energy bills, at a time when consumers are already facing record-high gas prices, a new report has warned. 

In a way, Stiebel Eltron has never had it so good. The heating manufacturer’s main factory is now working 24 hours a day making the energy-efficient heat pumps that Germany needs to wean itself off Russian gas.

The German government will provide lower subsidy rates for measures undertaken to reduce the energy use of buildings, like changing windows or installing a heat pump, as of Monday (15 August).

After missing its 2021 CO2 reduction target in buildings, the German government wants to address the sector's deficit by putting more funding into renovations and imposing a ban on new gas boilers as of 2024.

The European Commission aims to scale up renewables in heating and cooling as a way to phase out Russian gas, although industry sources say there is still much to do to ensure a level playing field with dominant fossil-fuel heating technologies.

Hoping to achieve its 2024 target of producing 500,000 heat pumps a year, the German government is pushing the industry to make necessary investments amid fears it will end up like the solar panel industry.

Sønderborg, a small Danish town lying just beyond the border with Germany, is a living example of a possible future for decarbonised towns – and a blueprint for study by policymakers the world over.

Austria is revamping its renewable heating law in order to reduce the country's immense dependence on Russia: pulling forward a sales phase-out of fossil gas boilers, and requiring broken oil and coal heaters to be replaced with green options.

Heat pumps, considered crucial to climate-neutral heating, are another industrial sector in which nations compete over leadership. The EU learnt a harsh lesson from the loss of its solar industry, can it avoid a repeat of history?

Amid growing pressure to reduce Germany’s dependence on Russian fossil fuels, the government presented plans on Tuesday (17 May) to save more energy, reports Clean Energy Wire.