“At this stage, the Commission has concerns that the planned support may not be in line with EU state aid rules, as it does not meet the ‘efficient district heating’ criteria set out in the energy efficiency directive,” the EU's executive said on Friday in a statement.
The networks in question are in the municipalities of Tarnobrzeg, Ropczyce, Lesko, Dębica and Ustrzyki Dolne, all in south-east Poland, and generate heat predominantly from coal-fired boilers, the statement added.
The commission said that Poland’s public support appeared to aim at inefficient heating systems and would risk "locking in inefficient and polluting heat production."
Poland produced 63.4 million tonnes of hard coal last year, 86 percent of the European Union’s output, according to Eurostat, the bloc’s statistics agency.
(jh/pk)
Source: PAP/ec.europa.eu