A coalition formed by the NGOs ECOS and the European Environmental Bureau (EEB) and the organisations Solar Heat Europe and Euro Heat and Power sent a letter to the European Commission on Friday 31 July asking it to take action to ensure fair competition between technologies in the heating sector.
According to the letter’s signatories, renewable heating and cooling technologies are indeed facing “unfair competition” from fossil fuel-based technologies, thereby curbing their rate of market penetration.
In particular, they denounce the fact that, in most Member States, fossil fuel technologies still benefit from low taxation and preferential market access through direct subsidies and the lack of adequate carbon pricing.
With the aim of ensuring that all installed heating and cooling solutions are based on renewable energy or sustainable waste heat sources by 2050, these organisations are calling on the Commission to revise the European energy taxation regime to fully reflect the environmental costs of all fossil energy carriers.
A solution along these lines seems to be envisaged by the Commission in the context of the revision of the EU Energy Taxation Directive (2003/96 - see EUROPE 12439/17). Currently in the public consultation phase (see EUROPE 12534/27), this proposed revision is scheduled for June 2021.
The signatories furthermore advocate a complete ban on public incentives for fossil fuel heating technologies throughout the European Union by 2022.
Finally, they are also calling for an urgent revision of the energy labelling and ecodesign system based on Directive 2009/125 and Regulation 2017/1369, in order to prevent heating systems using fossil fuels from benefiting from an undue ”green image” by being wrongly classified in category A.
See the letter: https://bit.ly/3i7c3b5 (Original version in French by Damien Genicot)