Policy

March 17, 2020
Munich strengthens its climate targets

As part of the most recent Fridays for Future protests in late November 2019, a huge crowd of young people gathered in the centre of Munich in southeast Germany, calling for more climate action. Barely three weeks later, the city council responded to their demands by declaring a state of...
March 6, 2020
Large gap between targets and installed solar heat capacity in Europe

According to a Eurostat press release published on 23 January, renewable energy sources made up 18 % of total energy generation throughout the European Union at the end of 2018, which means the EU’s target of 20 % by the end of 2020 seems well within reach. And yet, the above chart shows...
February 28, 2020
Possible, but tricky: carbon pricing in the building sector

Whether to include the building sector in the EU’s Emissions Trading System (ETS) was one of the key questions discussed at a workshop in Brussels in late January. Representatives from industry associations said at the event, organised by the European Heating Industry (EHI) association,...
February 12, 2020
Energy spatial plans ban fossil fuel heating in Vienna

Austria’s capital Vienna is one of several European cities that have announced wide-ranging plans to tackle climate change. In 2014, its council published a framework strategy, called Smart City Wien, which aims for a 35 % reduction in local per-capita greenhouse gas emissions by 2030 and...
January 27, 2020
Where you can meet renewable heating specialists over the next six months

The European Green Deal has been the new EU Commission’s most striking announcement to date. Its aim is to make Europe the first carbon-neutral continent in the world by 2050. The commission announced it would propose a European Climate Act in the first 100 days of its term, which is why...
November 18, 2019
First district cooling regulation in the MENA region

Abu Dhabi now has its first comprehensive regulatory standard on district cooling. It is based on Act No. 11, which was passed in 2018 and put the responsibility for regulating the district cooling sector on the newly founded emirate’s Department of Energy. Following extensive consultations...
October 23, 2019
Green heat policies in China benefit heat pumps

Several provinces in northern China have implemented green heat policies to avoid air pollution from coal boilers. Beijing was the first province to create a policy in 2016 and others, such as Hebei and Shan Xi, then followed suit. Heat sources and technologies recognised as renewable in...
March 28, 2019
Rising demand for solar thermal in Uzbekistan

Techno Future, which is part of the Uzbekistan-based Artel Group, has been satisfied with sales in its first year after starting production in 2017. Bahodir Karimov, Deputy Managing Director of Techno Future, said that the company had manufactured 10,000 collectors, sold under the Royal...
February 28, 2019
Building regulations stabilise Spanish market

According to national solar energy association ASIT, the Spanish solar thermal market was up by 2 % and added 205,530 m² (144 MW_th) of collector area in 2018 compared to 2017. An increase in newbuilds was the main reason for that growth – a trend which is expected to...
October 28, 2018
A closer look at six Latin American and Caribbean markets

Fundación Bariloche, a private-sector research institute based in Argentina, has recently published a report on the differences between the solar thermal markets in Barbados, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Mexico and Uruguay. The authors of the study take a look at key factors for growth, such as...
August 23, 2018
RVO renewable heat incentive statistics online

Since January 2016, a subsidy scheme by the Netherlands Enterprise Agency, also known as RVO, has led to the installation of 66,659 renewable heating systems in the country, the ISDE Viewer...
August 17, 2018
Successful solar energy bylaw in Bengaluru, India

Bengaluru Electricity Supply Company, a public utility also known as BESCOM, has been successful in implementing a bylaw to encourage the use of solar energy. Since 2009, 1,234 million m² of collector area had been installed in Bengaluru and had supplied energy equivalent to about 611...