Latvian Ministry of Environment Protection and Regional Development (VARAM) has prepared impossible conditions for residents who want to receive state aid to afford installation of a pellet boiler and other equipment powered by renewable energy resources in households.
Every owner of a private house is eligible to receive up to EUR 3 400 from the state to afford a pellet boiler if they decide to stop using gas. However, ministry officials have come up with such high requirements that no one will receive the money, because the boiler needs to meet A+++ level.
Multiple boiler traders and representatives of manufacturers said boilers for which residents could receive state aid were unavailable in Latvia.
LLC SB heating office manager Janis Grass said that every very good, premium class boilers met A++ level of efficacy, adding that he was not aware of any boilers that had an A+++ level.
Because the required level of efficacy is so high, boilers are more expensive. A good A+ level boiler’s starting price is about EUR 3,500, whereas the next level (A++) can cost twice or even three times more than that.
The price of an A+++ boiler is unknown, because no one in Latvia or other countries has ever seen such a thing.
VARAM Climate Finance and Technologies Office manager Raimonds Kass admitted that the ministry hoped to use the proposed requirements to divert potential air recipients’ attention from pellets to other forms of heating. Although politicians and experts consider pellets to be the best alternative to gas when it comes to heating, officials consider them too polluting. High popularity of pellets among private houses may cause a situation when air pollution increase dramatically.
Kass did not admit that the ministry’s officials made requirements too high. During the initial evaluation, Latvian manufacturers told representatives of the ministry that such boilers did exist. According to him, they were mentioned in some European Union regulation of 2015.
Kass didn’t reveal, which manufacturer told him that. He only said it was a company that manufactured boilers in Latvia.
However, there are only several companies in Latvia that manufacture pellet boilers, and there is no information available of any of them having certified their products in accordance to energy efficiency regulations. This much is confirmed by the largest and most experienced Latvian pellet boiler manufacturer LLC Grandeg board chairman Andris Lubins.
“If Grandeg boilers had one or two pluses, I would have put this on our website a long time ago, but there is nothing. Where did they come up with the three pluses for boilers? This is absurd,” Lubins said.
The Environment Investment Fund, which administrates the heating system replacement program, invites those interested to wait, promising that the impossible requirements will be changed.
But this will happen not because there aren’t any boilers, but because the geopolitical situation has changed. After the start of the war in Ukraine, it was proposed to reduce the A+++ class requirement to A+. Corrections may be ready within a month’s time.
Private house owners are eligible to receive up to EUR 5,000 if they decide to switch from gas heating to connection to the centralized heating network of the city they live in. This idea of VARAM’s is not popular at all. Only five people have consulted with Rigas Siltums in the last month.
VARAM’s developed assistance program provides for dropping fossil fuels like natural gas, diesel fuel and coal in favour of equipment that uses renewable energy resources – biomass pellet boilers, heat pumps, solar panels or connection to centralized heating system.
Aid is also planned for the production of electricity from renewable energy resources – sun panels, wind turbines for household needs.
The total financing available in the support program is EUR 20 million. (BNN/Business World Magazine)
