By 31 December 2025, Member States should have submitted their National Building Renovation Plans, as required by Article 3 of the Energy Performance of Building Directive (EPBD). These plans are crucial in that they must include, among others: a roadmap with nationally established targets for solar energy deployment by 2030, 2040 and 2050, an overview of planned policies and measures (for instance the implementation of the solar mandate), and an outline of investment needs.
Against this backdrop, over the past several months, the Solar Heat Europe team has been analysing the plans published to date. So far, we’ve published individual analyses of 13 Member States’ plans. These summaries provide a better understanding of each government’s commitment to the energy transition in heating, the roll-out of solar energy and the renovation of the building stock.
Solar Heat Europe has also prepared an overview of how solar thermal energy is addressed in the various national plans (see below). It reveals that countries such as Romania and Croatia are setting ambitious targets for the deployment of solar thermal energy in buildings, whilst Denmark and the Netherlands are only setting targets for photovoltaic energy. On the other, the analysis also highlights an uneven transposition of the solar mandate in countries such as Lithuania and Slovenia, where only solar thermal power is mentioned.
We are also actively involved in the integration of the solar mandate (Article 10 of the EPBD) across the various Member States national legal systems. In particular, the association has documented best practices from Austria, where the legislation covers both solar thermal and photovoltaic systems in its implementation, using a different formula for each technology (see through this link, page 12). The fair transposition of this article is absolutely critical to enabling the roll-out of all solar technologies across Europe.
Should members of the SHE network hear about any development on the transposition of the solar mandate, particularly in those countries where we do not have a national association, please feel free to share it with us.