Joel Boehme / May 2025
Image: Shutterstock
The European Commission recently published a new roadmap to end all remaining imports of Russian gas. Since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine started, the EU has slashed imports from the invader, but a lot of work remains to ensure a stable security of energy supply, and establish our strategic autonomy by way of energy resilience.
In that light, the conspicuous absence of clean heat solutions in the Commission’s roadmap is alarming. The word sequence “clean heating” does not appear in the document, and nor do technologies such as heat pumps, district heating & cooling networks, geothermal or solar thermal. Yet they provide a long-term path to climate friendly, affordable heating and cooling – a sector that currently makes up half of the EU’s entire energy consumption. About three quarters of that can be sourced to fossil fuels.
Instead of clean heat technologies, the document outlined ideas such as further increasing the EU’s import capacity for Liquid Natural Gas from exporters such as Qatar and the USA.
This is a false solution. We cannot end our addiction to polluting, geopolitically venomous fossil fuels by diversifying our number of dealers. Instead, we must completely rid ourselves of these system-critical dependencies, and build up a resilient, affordable and clean energy supply for heating & cooling.
The technologies are available, and Europe already enjoys a high level of industrial leadership in the sector. According to the Commission, between 60 – 73% of all heat pumps installed in Europe are already manufactured here. The EU accounts for a third of global exports in district heating and cooling, and 90% of the EU’s demand in solar thermal heat equipment is currently met by European manufacturers.
What’s missing is demand. Currently, the deployment of these solutions is hampered by several systemic issues, which need urgent political attention:
- Volatile and changing regulatory conditions, in which legislation is difficult to navigate, combined with slow and complex permitting procedures for clean heat projects
- A premium on the total cost of ownership for clean heat solutions compared to fossil fuel solutions, as well as steep up-front costs for the development of clean heat facilities
- Infrastructural deficiencies, such as underdeveloped heating networks and electricity grids which hamper the faster rollout of a diverse clean heat mix
Europe’s clean heat sector would be able to meet a demand spike, and stands ready to support policymakers who support Europe’s quest for energy resilience.
On 14 May 2025, in Brussels, 17 industry leaders in clean heating and cooling came together in Brussels, unveiling their manifesto at the inaugural meeting of the Clean Heat Industry Group.
The group's members are some of the most ambitious companies in sectors such as heat pumps, district heating and cooling, as well as geothermal and solar thermal panels. Now, they join forces across industry associations and sectors to strengthen the business case for clean heat, and for simplifying the rollout and deployment of all clean heat solutions.
This manifesto outlines a number of critical action items which could be implemented by the European Commission.
Firstly, the EU must maintain a stable policy environment. When the USA – up until recently a global leader in cleantech through the Biden administration’s Inflation Reduction Act – wavers, Europe must provide a beacon of stability and predictability. This means expediting the full implementation of the Green Deal, and moving to meet the EU’s climate targets for 2030 and 2040. The Green Deal, with critical pieces of energy legislation such as the Energy Efficiency Directive (EED) or the Energy Performance of Buildings Directive (EPBD), is fundamental to the strength of our clean heat industry. This type of legislation is a key demand driver, and maintaining the highest level of ambition is vital to send strong, positive market signals in this sector. Agreed-upon measures such as the ETS 2 – the part of Europe’s emissions trading system which will now put a price on buildings’ emissions – must be implemented on schedule, so that the business case for clean heat remains strong.
The current trend to ‘simplify’ legislation must support the business case for clean heat by slashing permitting times, and by genuinely simplifying regulation on topics such as currently-misaligned pieces of product legislation, or red tape hampering the installation of clean heat solutions. What’s needed to simplify the deployment of these technologies is long-term, stable and predictable support, and measures to bring down the price for clean heat, so as to make it competitive versus fossil heating.
Furthermore, the often-prohibitive cost premium for clean heat must be addressed. This means bringing down the total cost of ownership for households that look to switch to clean heat solutions, by supporting those who want to buy and install household-level solutions such as heat pumps and solar thermal panels. In a similar spirit, clean heat facilities and district heating and cooling systems face high up-front costs when being developed.
The European Commission has the opportunity to completely replace Europe’s current overreliance on costly, polluting fossil fuels with a heating mix that is clean, reliable and affordable. In doing so, Europe can maintain its industrial leadership in a competitive sector. But for that, we need a step-change in policy ambition.
