Bioenergia ry – the Bioenergy Association of Finland – considers the EU Heating and Cooling Strategy a crucially important and long-awaited policy.
The EU has advanced energy transition in the electricity sector quite successfully, whereas heating and cooling in many Member States still largely depends on fossil fuels. It is of utmost importance now to ensure clean heat as a cornerstone in the energy transition going forward and to unchain the EU from dependence that fossil oil and natural gas have created. Fossil fuels still account for 73% of heating in the EU, generating approximately 1,5 billion tonnes of CO2 emissions per year.
As its north star, the Heating and Cooling Strategy should help the EU in improving its competitiveness and resilience for military aggression. Defossilisation of heating is key for a competitive, climate neutral and resilient Europe, and the strategy should encompass all sectors: private households, district heating and process-heat in industry and businesses.
The current situation is incompatible with the EU’s foreign and security policy and long-term climate targets. The Heating and Cooling Strategy should explicitly commit to a gradual but definitive phase-out of fossil fuels in the sector. To ensure transparency and better data driven policies, a robust EU-wide traceability system for fossil fuels should be established and linked to full life-cycle emissions assessment; this would highlight the true environmental and social costs of fossil heating and provide a level playing field for clean alternatives such as bio-based heat.
The EU should build the upcoming heating and energy strategy on four key elements: technology neutrality, deep defossilisation, sector integration and system resilience.
We must learn from past mistakes when policies have been unfoundedly restrictive. This time technology neutrality must be appreciated as a guiding principle. Choosing winners is driving up the system cost and the EU cannot afford it any longer. We underline that the frequent updates to the Renewable Energy Directive (RED) have had negative impacts for investment in the bioenergy sector. The RED Directive should now stay as it is for the period until 2030.
District heating (DH) is a unique platform for flexible defossilisation and energy transition, and the strategy should fully recognise its value and, where feasible, build upon it. In Finland DH is responsible for 45 % of all heat, and renewables, waste heat and electric boilers account for 73 % of the production (in 2024). DH in parallel can also integrate industry and the neighbouring districts. Many industries have biobased processes, and bio-CHP can provide renewable electricity and heat in excess that nearby neighbourhood can utilise through heat network. This collaboration is conventional system integration and brings co-benefits to both sides.
Synergies between renewable heat and electrification are key to a resilient and climate-wise energy system. Dispatchable and storable solutions are needed as essential components of such a system. Bioenergy contributes to electricity generation and complements the electrification objective of the EU. Hybrid solutions of bioenergy and other renewables improve the overall resilience of the energy system. Bioenergy is renewable, decentralized, versatile and can be utilised in both small and large plants, which improves societal resilience in the unfortunate event of a military aggression.
The strategy should unlock blended public and private finance mechanisms to demonstrate clean heating solutions. This includes redirecting existing financial flows away from fossil fuels. Bioenergy offers an affordable and accessible solution to this challenge. It is also worth noting that through bioenergy the Heating and Cooling strategy has a direct link to EU’s objective and plans to scale up technological carbon removal (CDR) and CCU in Europe. Therefore, the Heating and Cooling Strategy needs to be coherent with, for example, the Industrial Carbon Management Strategy (COM/2024/62).
To conclude, the upcoming revision of the EU Heating and Cooling Strategy is a critical opportunity to recognise heat as a central pillar of the energy transition. The Bioenergy Association of Finland calls for a pragmatic and inclusive approach that drives the deployment of clean and renewable heat while strengthening the EU’s energy security, resilience and competitiveness.