Energy & Climate Change

This CMS Guide is de­signed to shine a light on the wide vari­ety of en­ergy sav­ing laws in se­lec­ted CEE coun­tries by ex­plain­ing the most im­port­ant leg­al meas­ures and help­ing you to dis­cov­er where your op­por­tun­it­ies might lie. Polit­ic­al and leg­al frame­work En­ergy trans­form­a­tion re­quires build­ing up new en­ergy sources and that takes time. Sav­ing en­ergy, how­ever, is the quick­est and cheapest way to ad­dress the cur­rent en­ergy crisis, which is mainly caused by Rus­sia’s in­va­sion of Ukraine. Re­du­cing en­ergy con­sump­tion cuts house­holds’ and com­pan­ies’ high en­ergy bills.Build­ing on the “Fit for 55” pack­age of pro­pos­als and com­plet­ing the ac­tions on en­ergy se­cur­ity of sup­ply and stor­age, the European Com­mis­sion’s RE­PowerEU plan put for­ward a set of five ac­tions, the first of which is en­ergy sav­ing. Uni­on law sets forth man­dat­ory sav­ing goals for Mem­ber States but leaves them plenty of lee­way to choose between a vari­ety of meas­ures. Ap­plic­ant coun­tries and many oth­ers have passed en­ergy sav­ings laws and tar­gets too – of­fer­ing ad­di­tion­al flex­ib­il­ity.As a frame­work, the Fit for 55 pack­age and the European Cli­mate Law (REG 2021/1119) sets out a bind­ing, ir­re­vers­ible re­duc­tion of an­thro­po­gen­ic emis­sions. By 2030, 55% of the net GHG (green­house gas) emis­sions com­pared to 1990 must be saved. By 2050, the man­dat­ory net zero emis­sion goal must be achieved.Reg­u­la­tion 2022/1032 re­quires that mem­ber states fill their gas stor­age fa­cil­it­ies to at least 80-90% or that they store at least 35% of their av­er­age an­nu­al con­sump­tion in European stor­age fa­cil­it­ies. Re­du­cing con­sump­tion over the years re­duces the filling ob­lig­a­tion.Since Au­gust 2022, ob­lig­at­ory re­duc­tions in gas con­sump­tion ap­ply to EU mem­ber states (Reg­u­la­tion 2022/1032). The core in­nov­a­tion of this re­gime is the Uni­on alarm that can be triggered by the European Coun­cil if there is a ma­ter­i­al risk of grave gas sup­ply short­ages, ex­traordin­ary gas de­mand or a na­tion­al alarm pur­su­ant to Dir­ect­ive 2017/1938 in at least five Mem­ber States. Once a Uni­on alarm has been triggered and for as long as it re­mains in force, mem­ber states must re­duce their gas con­sump­tion by 15%. There is a par­tial ex­cep­tion if this would oth­er­wise cause an elec­tri­city crisis in the re­spect­ive mem­ber state. However, the steer­ing meas­ures to be taken and wheth­er cer­tain groups of gas con­sumers are gran­ted more fa­vour­able con­di­tions re­main at the mem­ber state’s dis­cre­tion. Re­gard­ing elec­tri­city, Reg­u­la­tion 2022/1854 on an emer­gency in­ter­ven­tion to ad­dress high en­ergy prices aims to re­duce elec­tri­city con­sump­tion by 10% and ease the pres­sure on elec­tri­city prices through rev­en­ue caps. Again, Mem­ber States are free to choose the ap­pro­pri­ate meas­ures to re­duce gross elec­tri­city con­sump­tion and meet the 10% tar­get.Ad­di­tion­al rules ap­ply to the fuel con­sump­tion of trucks or the en­ergy con­sump­tion of dis­trict heat­ing/cool­ing. The CMS Guide The res­ult of these reg­u­la­tions con­cern­ing en­ergy sav­ing has been the in­tro­duc­tion of a wide vari­ety of en­ergy sav­ing laws in in­di­vidu­al states; and many more meas­ures are still to come. This CMS Guide is de­signed to shine a light on these reg­u­la­tions by ex­plain­ing the most im­port­ant leg­al meas­ures and help­ing you to dis­cov­er where your op­por­tun­it­ies might lie. For each jur­is­dic­tion, the guide is struc­tured in­to: (1) a coun­try over­view,  (2) na­tion­al re­lief meas­ures for high en­ergy prices,  (3) na­tion­al/re­gion­al/com­mun­al en­ergy sav­ings meas­ures, and  (4) en­ergy stor­age status and in­cent­ives.The fol­low­ing meas­ures have been chosen by the states rep­res­en­ted in this  guide:  sub­sidies to end-con­sumers (Aus­tria in gen­er­al for en­ergy prices; Croa­tia for gas con­sump­tion), price caps: elec­tri­city (Croa­tia for house­holds, un­der­tak­ings and cer­tain­pub­lic con­sumers; Ukraine for house­holds),re­duced VAT rate (Croa­tia, North Mace­do­nia), tax in­cent­ives to privately store gas (Ukraine); ex­emp­tion from steer­ing meas­ures for privately stor­ing gas (Aus­tria),sub­sidies to com­pensate for high en­ergy prices (Bul­garia and Slov­akia, in Slov­e­nia for en­ter­prises, in Türki­ye for ag­ri­cul­ture) and en­ergy sav­ing meas­ures: (Croa­tia for SMEs); the real­loc­a­tion of EU funds to sup­port en­ergy con­sumers (Slov­akia); sub­sidies for en­ergy stor­age solu­tions (Aus­tria, Bul­garia and Ukraine) or for heat pro­du­cers (Ukraine),en­ergy ef­fi­ciency meas­ures in­cl. di­git­al­isa­tion (Bul­garia),re­duced hours of elec­tri­city or heat­ing sup­ply (North Mace­do­nia) or of gas sup­ply (Slov­akia),re­duc­tion of en­ergy con­sump­tion by the pub­lic ad­min­is­tra­tion (Aus­tria, North Mace­do­nia, Slov­e­nia), an­dob­lig­a­tions on gas stor­age op­er­at­ors to feed gas in­to the grid (Aus­tria, Slov­akia) or to sup­ply heat pro­du­cers at pref­er­en­tial prices (Ukraine).re­wards for vol­un­tary re­duc­tion of gas and/or elec­tric en­ergy con­sump­tion (Slov­e­nia)educed per­mit­ting re­quire­ments for PV and wind plants (Türki­ye).