EU Parliament highlights role of renewable heating and cooling

European Parliament, Brussels, Belgium (source: flickr/ Francisco Antunes, creative commons)

Alexander Richter 28 Jan 2013

The European Parliament`s Industry, Research and Energy committee (ITRE) last week approved “its own initiative report on the Commission’s “Energy Roadmap 2050”. The Parliament notably calls for greater attention to be paid to the heating and cooling sector and highlights how geothermal, together with other renewables and energy efficiency measures, have the potential to decarbonise heat demand in a more cost effective way.”

“MEPs have understood how relevant heat and cooling is to our economy (ca. 45% of final energy consumption) and have now urged the EU Commission to include this sector in the decarbonisation pathways of the energy roadmap 2050” commented Philippe Dumas, Manager at the European Geothermal Energy Council.

The report notes that geothermal technologies are readily available solutions which can provide sustainable and affordable energy in a very efficient way. However, the heat market is still largely dominated by highly polluting and imported fossil fuels such as gas, coal, and inefficient fuel oil and direct electric heating systems. “If renewable and efficient heating and coolingsolutions such as geothermal were appropriately taken into account in the EU decarbonisation roadmaps, it would be easy to demonstrate that the EU can significantly decrease the overall costs of decarbonising its economy” Dumas added.

The European Commission should therefore take today’s outcome on board and fully consider RES heat as key in defining an ambitious EU energy and climate package for 2030.

You can take a look at the EGEC Policy Paper on the European Commission’s Energy Roadmap 2050 here .

Source: EGEC