Key Issue 4 - Financial Incentives
Several EU Member States have enacted financial incentives to support the uptake of RES heating and cooling. The possible incentive schemes are manifold, ranging from tax breaks to direct investment subsidies, from green heat certificates to reduced loans. The K4RES-H project tries to answer the question on how financial incentives schemes should be designed to best promote the uptake of RES heat.
During Phase 1 a detailed methodological framework has been developed to facilitate a parallel and comparable approach of the case studies about the single technologies. Indicators have been developed, against which existing incentive schemes are going to be evaluated.
During Phase 2, based on this framework and set of indicators, a number of case studies on financial incentive schemes for solar thermal, bioheat or geothermal heat have been produced. The case studies were chosen in view of providing an overview of the different types of financial incentive schemes of particular interest. The European associations of the relative technologies drew their general conclusions about the available experience with financial incentive schemes.
During Phase 3, the analysis of the single technologies is going to be integrated into a general overview focused on RES-H in general. Particular attention is going to be given to identifying possible financial incentive schemes that do not represent a burden for the public budgets. Common denominators among the different RES-H technologies are going to be sought, in view of proposing models of financial incentives suitable to promote RES-H as a whole, also considering the costs and benefits of possible harmonisation at EU level.
Project results currently available:
Studies and guidelines on financial incentives for:
- Financial Incentive Schemes for Bioheat
- Financial Incentives Geothermal , Proposal for the linkage of incentives to the contribution of individual Geothermal installations to the reaching of energy policy goals
- Financial Incentives for Solar Thermal
- Financial Incentives for Renewable Heating and Cooling
