To meet decarbonisation goals, global renewable power capacity will need to more than triple by 2030, according to leading energy agencies. Centralised renewable generation will not deliver this level of change on its own, nor should it. Distributed energy resources (DERs) such as heat pumps, electric vehicles, small-scale solar generation and battery storage are...

Pompy ciepła to jedna z kluczowych technologii na drodze transformacji energetycznej, już niedługo stanie się najważniejszą technologią dla dekarbonizacji ogrzewnictwa. Obecnie zdecydowana większość ciepła do gospodarstw domowych jest dostarczana przez paliwa kopalne. W celu promowania i zachęcania do instalowania pomp ciepła na całym świecie, w ra...

Europe is heavily reliant on fossil fuels in the heating sector. The EU has set itself a goal of deploying 30 million additional heat pumps by 2030. To advance the transition away from fossil fuels in the heating sector, the EU and its Member States have recently proposed or agreed on several heat-related policies. This includes an emissions trading scheme for gr...

Heat pumps, a critical technology for clean energy systems, are poised to become the most important technology for heating decarbonisation. Currently, the vast majority of heat is provided by fossil fuels. In order to promote and encourage heat pump installations across the globe, the Regulatory Assistance Project, CLASP and the Global Buildings Performance Netwo...

Rapidly phasing out fossil gas demand has become a top priority in Europe. Existing European legislation is expected to achieve only moderate reductions by 2030. The ongoing energy crisis has provided an opportunity to aim for even more extensive decreases in fossil gas demand. Legislation under negotiation, informed by the European Commission’s REPowerEU pla...

The Renewable Energy Directive (RED), designed to help meet the EU’s ambitious 2030 and 2050 climate targets, sets targets for growing renewables usage for heating and cooling in the building sector. As currently written, however, the RED encourages inefficient uses of renewables in buildings to meet these goals. In this paper, we suggest reforms to the RED wo...

Taxing energy in line with its environmental harm aligns the prices facing consumers with policy objectives. Energy taxes and levies encourage energy efficiency and raise revenues for governments, which can then dedicate them to energy transition projects. Not all energy sources are equal, however, when it comes to their environmental-damage costs. Adding taxes a...

As part of the Fit for 55 legislative package, the European Commission proposed a recast of the Energy Efficiency Directive in July 2021. The recast includes significant changes to the Directive’s cornerstone article on the energy savings obligation, Article 7 (now Article 8). As a next step, EU legislators – the European Parliament and the Council of the EU ...

Removing fossil fuels from heating is a goal of policy makers around the world in order to decarbonise energy systems and to remove exposure to fossil fuel imports. Alongside efficiency measures, the key technology to replace fossil fuels for heating is heat pumps. In the EU, where fossil fuels — mostly gas — dominate the heating mix, rapid action on heat is ...

The European Union is entering a crucial decade in its energy transition, with the 55% climate goal representing a step change in ambition. Energy efficiency is expected to play a major role in achieving necessary reductions in energy consumption across buildings, transport and industry. Enacting the Energy Efficiency First principle will require reliable data on...