Of the 27 EU Member States, 19 countries do not provide sufficient subsidies for families to invest in renewable heating solutions or apply disproportionate tax regimes on electricity, as the European NGO-run campaign Cool Products pointed out on Monday 18 October, based on a report by the European Environmental Bureau (EEB).
According to this document, the period needed to cover the initial cost of installing a heat pump through savings on energy bills is reasonable (8 years or less) in just 8 Member States (Italy, Portugal, Spain, Finland, Cyprus, Malta, Austria and France) for a middle-income family of four.
European households are therefore not supported enough to replace a fossil fuel boiler with a heat pump, lamented Cool Products.
The report estimates that replacing all gas and oil boilers with heat pumps or solar thermal boilers at a price affordable to all (for a typical investment of €10,000) in the EU would require an additional effort of €70 billion in subsidies to enable consumers to meet the related initial costs.
See the report: https://bit.ly/3BTEm7o (Original version in French by Damien Genicot)