Energy efficiency in single family houses (the Małopolskie and Śląskie Regions)

This component of the Catching-up Regions Initiative is oriented towards the improvement of air quality and increasing energy efficiency in single family houses in the Małopolskie and Śląskie Regions. It is expected that this work results in recommendations on set of the fiscal, financial and grant instruments promoting the increased energy efficiency of single family houses.

The team of the World Bank has supported the Ministry of Development and other national regional entities since July 2017 in defining possible strategies, developing financial incentive system and the implementation of the programs accelerating and increasing the scale of thermal modernization and boiler replacement in such houses. 

The burning problem

Single family houses are currently the biggest source of air pollution in Poland. Measures aimed at increasing the energy efficiency in residential buildings such as thermal modernization and the replacement of inefficient boilers are cost-effective methods of solving this problem. The consumers affected by high costs of energy are not sufficiently urged to install modern boilers fired with cleaner, but more expensive fuels. The district heating system is mostly limited to urban areas, but even there are single family houses not connected to the district heating. Liquid fuel is available (in the two mostly populated regions, the access to the gas network fluctuates between 40 and 60%), but the application of gas for heating is limited (only approximately 25% households use gas as the primary or secondary heat source). Despite considerable energy savings in the middle- and long-term perspective, the initial outlays for many households seem to be too high to change the heating installation and implement thermal modernization.

Report

The report with the diagnosis of the situation was completed in September 2017. It includes the analysis of possible improvements in energy efficiency in single family houses and conclusions drawn from the to-date policies and existing financial incentive programs at the national and regional levels. The preliminary assessment based on only 1 million single family houses in two regions (there are 5 million of single family houses in Poland) indicates that the investment in the replacement of old boilers is at the level of 3 billion EUR, and the required financing of thermal modernization is considerably higher. The cost of implementation at Poland's scale is ca +50 billion EUR.

The team analyses various options (on the basis of international and Polish experience), and it will help in the development of working versions of financial mechanisms which will permit the large-scale financing of the implementation of activities related to energy efficiency in single family houses in the two target regions.