Why does the EU need a Heating and Cooling Strategy?

Heating and cooling (H&C) represent almost half of the EU’s energy use. The EU needs a concrete H&C Action Plan (HCAP) to decarbonise this essential sector for several reasons:   

• meeting emissions reductions targets – H&C in households alone represents around 40% of their greenhouse gas emissions;  

• energy security – clean heat technologies could help shift the EU’s dependency on fossil fuels   

• H&C rely mostly on costly fossil fuels, exposing consumers to price volatility and the EU to pressure from fossil fuel exporting nations like Russia;  

• health – particulate emissions from heating with coal or biomass are large contributors to air pollution, in turn the largest environmental health risk in Europe; 

• affordability – around 10% of EU households struggle to heat or cool their homes adequately. 

However, there is no single EU policy tackling the sector. The last H&C strategy dates back to 2016 and is now out of date in view of the current geo-political instability, climate realities, and technological advances in clean heating. Policies tackling H&C are also distributed across EU legislation – from the Energy Efficiency Directive and the Renewable Energy Directive to the Energy Performance of Buildings Directive. We need a new action plan that looks at H&C holistically in households and industry, and tackles barriers to the affordable roll-out of all available clean heat technologies.  

Energy Cities’ research has shown that Member States lag in supporting cities. The HCAP should propose technical support for cities to draft and implement their local H&C plans. We’d like to see technical guidelines and the creation of a common template, online tools that provide checklists for cities on how to carry out the planning; programmes up-skilling city planners; best practice examples and an encouragement of exchanges between city planners to support a quick uptake of good approaches.  

The European Commission already backs some initiatives, such as Plan4Cold and ESCALATE, which helps several European cities develop heating and cooling plans. The HCAP should establish dedicated funding mechanisms, such as an EU Heating and Cooling Facility modelled on the successful EU City Facility to help local governments overcome hurdles, and call for national support mechanisms. The HCAP should mandate monitoring and implementation of municipalities’ development plans to meet 2030 and 2040 targets, and support the development of one-stop-shops and online tools for citizens. 

Currently, it is expected for the first quarter of 2026. We understand that it will be complemented by a new Electrification Action Plan that should contain elements to increase the deployment of heat pumps, and ensure the efficiency of cooling equipment (mainly relying on electricity). It will be important to ensure that the electrification plan is geared towards renewable energy, looking holistically at digitalisation, storage, connectors between Member States and all other elements needed for a grid to function on 100% renewable energy. 

Unfortunately, some Member States, MEPs and some Commissioners are trying to roll back legislation that would support clean H&C, under the guise of “simplification”. The Affordable Energy Action Plan contains too few elements on H&C and industry still takes up the biggest part of it. Still, there are some good elements in it with the most important one – modernising energy taxation – is also one of the hardest to move forward on. We hope that further discussions will support more action for citizens, and focus more on H&C, a sector that is so closely linked to affordability for citizens.