Europe energy efficiency review to focus on district heating

An upcoming European Commission review of EU energy efficiency policy will focus on district heating, according to reports.

‘We need to focus much more on heating, where there is a lot of low-hanging fruit – much more than in electricity,’ said Samuel Furfari, an adviser to the Commission’s director general for energy, in an interview with European policy news site EurActiv.

To date the Commission has focused more on electricity than efficiency in the heating sector, Furfari said, because the climate diversity of Europe’s Member States has mitigated against a single policy solution. But he argued that district heating ‘in combination with structural funds and biomass’ offers the potential for big energy savings in the heating sector and could significantly improve Europe’s energy efficiency progress.

The review, which will measure Europe’s progress in improving its energy efficiency performance by 20% by 2020, will take place this summer. Analysts have called progress ‘slow’, with EU numbers predicting improvements of around 16%.

Source: COSPP