European Union plans to tighten the rules for gas boilers have been significantly softened, and Polish owners of gas heating systems will not face a sudden, sweeping limit on gas boiler sales. The final version of the EU ecodesign regulation, revised after industry pressure and intergovernmental talks, is far less radical than the original draft.
The initial proposal caused concern among heating equipment manufacturers and distributors in Poland and across the EU. It assumed that the sale of gas boilers would be substantially limited on the single market, which would have reshaped the offer of many Polish suppliers.
Those plans met with strong criticism from the sector. After consultations and negotiations involving member states and industry representatives, the document was rewritten and the most restrictive provisions were removed. The regulation that emerged from the process is much more moderate than the one first presented.
Condensing gas boilers and LPG stay in the game
The Polish Liquid Gas Organisation (POGP) reports that the new requirements will establish condensing technology as the market standard. This means that the widely installed condensing boilers powered by natural gas, as well as devices using LPG, should be able to comply with the updated criteria.
At the same time, the regulation introduces a uniform energy label scale from A to G for all heating technologies. Although every type of heating system will be assessed within one classification framework, the calculation method used for a given technology remains different. The rating is not based on one universal comparison formula designed to favour a particular solution.
No common methodology tailored to heat pumps
POGP stresses that the earlier proposal included a single methodology for evaluating all devices, prepared mainly with heat pumps in mind. That idea was dropped during the legislative process, which the gas industry sees as an important success.
Still, appliances that use electricity may achieve higher energy-efficiency classes in practice. This is meant to reflect their specific way of operating and their work parameters, especially for heat pumps. For the Polish market, the outcome means gas boilers are not being pushed out by the EU regulation, while the future heating mix will be judged on a clearer, though technology-dependent, labelling system.
Source: WNP.PL, Photo: Shutterstock/Potashev Aleksandr
