Europe to draft directive on Green Heat

BRUSSELS, Belgium, February 22, 2006 (Refocus Weekly)

The European Parliament has supported the concept of new regulations to promote Green Heat sources for space conditioning on the continent.

It has endorsed a resolution drafted by German socialist MEP Mechtild Rothe which calls for a new directive which will require member countries to meet thermal heating and cooling applications from geothermal heat pumps, biomass and solar thermal technologies. Rothe is chair of the European Forum for Renewable Energy Sources (Eufores), which wants the directive to set a target to double the share of Green Heat by 2020, from the current level of 10%.

“There is at present no legal provision concerning heating and cooling from renewable sources of energy,” states the adopted text. “The objective of the proposal requested is to evaluate and exploit economic potential with the aim of increasing the share of renewable energies used in heating and cooling in the EU ... to a realistic and ambitious figure.”

“An increase in the share of renewable energy used in heating and cooling should make a substantive contribution to securing European energy supplies, to creating jobs and to improving the environment, and significantly reduce demand in the EU for conventional energy, overall energy consumption in the EU heating and the cooling sector, the EU's dependence on oil and gas, in particular, and the cost of energy to consumers for domestic and professional uses,” it continues. It requests the European Commission to submit a legislative proposal on increasing the share from Green heat to Parliament by the end of July.

Energy commissioner Andris Piebalgs has promised to table a proposal for a new directive on Green Heat before the end of this year, after Parliament voted 519 to 60 in favour of the concept. He will propose new legislation later this year.

More than 40% of primary energy in Europe is consumed for heating buildings or water, and for heating in industrial processes.

“Directives to promote renewable sources of energy in the fields of electricity and transport have resulted in, or boosted, sustainable development in the Member States,” the text explains. “Market developments in renewable energies in the individual Member States, which vary enormously from one to another, are due for the most part not to differences in potential, but rather to different, and in some cases inadequate, political and legal framework conditions.”

“The directive requested is intended to allow all the relevant technologies to achieve a high degree of market penetration and development in all Member States,” it adds. “The economic feasibility of the technologies and procedures concerned is to be accelerated by mass production and mass marketing.”

“The potential of renewable sources of energy for heating and cooling, which has so far hardly been tapped, ought to be exploited, provided that the energy and environmental outcomes prove positive and compatible with sustainable production methods,” the text states. “Member States must be required to ensure a clear legal framework for the authorisation, control and certification of the use of renewable forms of energy for heating and cooling.”

“Now the Commission has to act,” says the European Renewable Energy Council in its response to the vote. “In order to develop the full potential of renewables, clear and coherent legislative action is needed in the field of renewable heating and cooling (as well as green power and green fuels).

“Nearly half of the European energy consumption is needed in the heating sector, but there is not yet one piece of legislation on European level in place that aims to increase the share of renewable heating and cooling production,” it adds.


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