How to drive up the use of renewables for cooling and heating

The European Commission has launched a public consultation on the use of renewable energy for heating and cooling, inviting comments from any interested party. The information will aid a Commission's impact assessment. The recent Green Paper, 'A European Strategy for Sustaina...

The European Commission has launched a public consultation on the use of renewable energy for heating and cooling, inviting comments from any interested party. The information will aid a Commission's impact assessment.

The recent Green Paper, 'A European Strategy for Sustainable, Competitive and Secure Energy', underlined the need to develop new, secure and alternative sources of energy for Europe. Europe needs to meet both long-term energy needs, and targets set in the Lisbon strategy, to reduce its environmental impact, particularly reducing carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions.

Heating and cooling consume a growing proportion of Europe's energy bill. On 14 February 2006, the European Parliament adopted a report drafted by German MEP Mechtild Rothe (SDP), outlining the need for incentives to increase the uptake of renewables for heating and cooling. The report suggests doubling the proportion of renewable energy used for heating and cooling to 20 per cent by 2020.

The current picture is confusing - almost half of the fuel consumption in the EU is spent on heating. However, hotter summers are increasing the demand for fuel for cooling in the summer. Some Member States now have their peak fuel consumption in the summer.

'The market development of cooling from renewable energy must be accelerated above all in order to avert a further increase in electricity consumption. Geothermal and solar thermal energy and biomass are able to replace large amounts of fossil fuels and thereby reduce emissions of CO2 and other harmful substances,' reads the Rothe report.

Of course, the development of efficient renewable heating and cooling sources will have the knock-on effect of developing new technologies, which can in turn be sold, fuelling Europe's innovation drive and boosting the economy.

The consultation asks respondents to consider a series of 15 questions, bearing in mind that the EU has targets of 21 per cent of renewable energy by 2010, with 5.75 per cent from biofuels. The production of heating and cooling from renewable energy has so far not been the subject of specific EU legislation.

The questions aim to analyse the obstacles and opportunities for promoting renewable energy for heating and cooling. Responses will then be merged with an ongoing impact assessment study.