Czechia lags behind in meeting energy savings target

A new implementation progress report continues to show a slow pace in achieving energy savings. By the end of 2020, Czechia must achieve a total of 51.1 PJ in new savings and 204.39 PJ in cumulative savings.

The Ministry of Industry and Trade prepared its annual report on progress towards national energy efficiency targets in Czechia for 2017 at the end of April. Compared with the previous year, there was a significant restructuring of savings achieved in previous years and across newly prepared measures. According to the report, the reason is an effort to capture and quantify soft energy efficiency measures.

The Czech Technical University prepared a comprehensive methodology for the Ministry of Industry and Trade in December 2017, under which savings within the EFEKT 2 programme were newly quantified at 378.2 TJ in 2017.

Implementation of Article 5 of the Energy Efficiency Directive

Article 5 of the Energy Efficiency Directive concerns savings achieved through the renovation of buildings used by central government institutions with an energy-related floor area exceeding 250 m². Czechia is slightly lagging behind in meeting the target of annually renovating 3% of the total floor area of buildings used by a total of 37 institutions.

The report also mentions uncounted planned investments worth CZK 340 million, which should deliver more than 32.9 TJ in savings. It further shows that 586 out of 775 buildings do not meet Class C. Overall, 1 593 682 m² out of 2 431 918 m² does not comply.

Implementation of Article 7 of the Energy Efficiency Directive

The binding target for new and cumulative savings is addressed in Article 7 of the Energy Efficiency Directive. Since 1 January 2014, Member States have been required to save 1.5% of annual energy sales volumes to final customers, calculated on the basis of average sales during the three years preceding 1 January 2013.

In implementing Article 7, savings achieved in 2017 again fell short of expectations (an average of 7.3 PJ annually). Looking at the overall target in Figure 1, it is clear that more than 33.44 PJ in new savings must be achieved over the remaining period.

Given the insufficient progress to date, meeting the target will be problematic. As usual, the report therefore points to the need to make up the shortfall by intensifying efforts to meet the obligation during the upcoming 2018-2020 period.