The programme for “heating-unit” subsidies will start on 1 January

Press release: 21.12.2011

In co-operation with the Moravian-Silesian Region, the Ministry of the Environment is announcing a programme for replacement of old heating units from 1 January 2012. The joint subsidy programme is intended to reduce air pollution from small combustion sources, i.e. local heating units, where people frequently burn poor-quality fuels and wastes.

“This joint subsidy programme is aimed to reduce air pollution from small combustion sources, i.e. “local heating units”, where people often burn poor-quality fuels or even wastes,” explained Minister Tomáš Chalupa. “In the current programme, we hope to verify whether the inhabitants in the Moravian-Silesian Region would be interested in the subsidies. I am personally convinced that they will be interested; more environmentally sound means of heating in the region would lead to a reduction in overall emissions by tens of tonnes annually and we are prepared to increase the volume of subsidies up to ten-fold in the future,” added the Minister.

“We realise that environmentally sound heating of family homes through conversion to some other kind of fuel – such as gas or heating by electricity is completely unacceptable for most of the inhabitants of the region in the light of the constantly increasing cost of living at the present time. In our region, coal as a fuel is seen as absolutely traditional and safe source of energy and people want to continue using it. The subsidy programme is directly precisely towards this part of the population and should be an impulse for replacement of old heating units by new automatic units with much lower emissions. For a general idea, local heating units contribute almost one third to total emissions in the region, where this total amount of dust equals approx. 7000 tonnes,” pointed out Deputy Regional Administrator of the Moravian-Silesian Region, Miroslav Novák.

In the context of this call, CZK 20 million is available in the Joint Programme “To support replacement of current manually filled solid-fuel heating units by new low-emission automatic heating units burning coal or coal and biomass in the Moravian-Silesian Region”. The detailed conditions of this programme will be published on the web sites of the Ministry of the Environment, the State Environmental Fund of the Czech Republic and the Moravian-Silesian Region.

Michaela Jendeková, tiskové oddělení MŽP