Clean Heat for Homes

Securing a just energy transition to reduce the EU’s legacy reliance on wood burning

Accelerating the decarbonisation of the residential heating sector in the European Union has never been more urgent. The issue concerns energy poverty, air pollution, public health, biodiversity, and climate resilience. Failing to ensure social justice in transition policies undermines popular support and, ultimately, these policies’ effectiveness.

Co-organised by Fern and the Cool Heating Coalition on Tuesday 18 February at the European Parliament, this event explored what a just transition in the residential heating sector could look like and discuss how EU residents can be supported to access affordable and cleaner heating alternatives.

With welcoming remarks by hosts and Members of the European Parliament, Sigrid Friis (Renew, Denmark) and Ville Niinistö (Greens, Finland), the event featured three panels:

Decarbonised renewable heating options

Moderated by Kira Taylor, energy, climate & environment reporter

Mélanie Auvray, European Heat Pump Association
Steffen Verheyen, Agora Energie-Wende

Reducing the heat demand

Moderated by Marco Grippa, Environmental Coalition on Standards (ECOS)

Eva Brardinelli, CAN Europe
Geoffrey Van Moeseke, UCLouvain & SlowHeat

Ensuring access to clean heat

Moderated by Clare Taylor, Cool Heating Coalition

Anna Bajomi, FEANTSA (European Federation of National Organisations Working with the Homeless)
Adam Harmat, WWF Hungary
Richard Lowes, Regulatory Assistance Project
Video testimonial from Aranka Rostas, Lightbringers Foundation

The introductions by the two hosting MEPs were in complete agreement with ours: by pushing Member States to reward energy companies to burn wood, and households to buy wood stoves and boilers, the EU’s bioenergy policy is essentially rewarding the destruction of forests, the land sink, biodiversity, and causing additional GHG emissions and air pollution, worsening climate change. It is a policy mistake which must be corrected.

But, in the meantime, people must heat their homes, and concrete policy solutions must be developed for them to access cleaner heating options. The event focused on discussing these solutions. Here are a few highlights.

Firewood: the fuel of the poor?

We heard a short video message from Aranka Rostás, from the Lightbringers Foundation in Hungary, sharing her lived experience of cold homes and firewood heating, to highlight solutions including targeting funding for low-income households and exploiting local energy sources, such as geothermal. In Latvia and Lithuania, over 80% of households at risk of poverty rely on firewood. In Bulgaria, Romania, Croatia, and Estonia, it’s over 60%. Watch Aranka’s video message here.

Firewood offers flexibility and independence from utility debt, but rising prices in areas hit by extreme poverty push people toward toxic alternatives and predatory lending. We heard how subsidising inefficient biomass burning in power plants leads to soaring firewood prices for households in Hungary.

Firewood is mainly used in the least-insulated homes—which need significant improvements before they can transition to cleaner heating options such as heat pumps. Improving housing quality is necessary to reduce energy demand and to cover up-front costs, but this can take decades.

Prioritising clean, affordable and renewable solutions

Deploying clean heat technologies will face major challenges as long as there are massive subsidies for fossil fuels and other forms of combustion-based heating. A dedicated EU Heating and Cooling Action Plan, now postponed to 2026, is long overdue. Local heating and cooling plans and industrial decarbonisation can be delivered with heat pumps, among other technologies.

It is also a matter of competitiveness for European companies, who still have dominant market positions in key segments, but need a predictable legal framework and better market conditions.

It is crucial to ensure effective heat planning so that decarbonisation policies don’t create new inequalities. The Social Climate Fund (SCF) must support vulnerable households in a just transition. NGOs and CSOs should be included in programme design and local action, as solutions will differ depending on where they take place. SCF funding should go directly to cities and energy communities.

Achieving the heating transition will require resourcefulness and shifts in perspective, as illustrated by projects like SlowHeat, which focuses on heating bodies rather than bricks. Good quality housing stock and an understanding of the drivers of healthy indoor environments will go a long way towards achieving the technical and behavioural shifts needed to reduce heat demand.

The presentations are available here. Images by Charis Brice are available here.