In February, a pilot program of the National Fund for Environmental Protection and Water Management "District Heating" was launched.
This is a support instrument that results from the need to adapt to more stringent emission standards and reduce the negative impact on the environment of the Polish heating sector at county level. The program is addressed to medium-sized heating companies (up to 50 MW), but only to those in which municipal entities are the majority shareholder.
In the coming years, Polish system heating has to implement a series of extremely capital-intensive investments in the area of de-dusting, desulphurisation and denitrification of installations in order to adapt to restrictive EU requirements. The program will be implemented until 2025. Its budget has been estimated at PLN 500 million, of which PLN 300 million will be a low-interest repayable support and 150 million non-refundable financing.
District District Heating is a support for projects in the scope of: limiting or avoiding harmful emissions to the atmosphere, reducing the consumption of primary raw materials, improving energy efficiency, new sources of heat and electricity, modernization and expansion of heating networks and energy use of geothermal resources. The condition for receiving support is to implement an investment that will allow for early adaptation to EU requirements.
The pilot support program "District Heating" is currently directed only to 130 enterprises with a total thermal power of up to 50 MW, in which the majority owner are local government units or cities and in which the share of private capital does not exceed 30%. The assumption is that as the program develops, it will cover all medium-sized system heat producers.
