Belgium, which will receive 5.9 billion euros from the European recovery and resilience fund, Next Generation EU, of which the Flemish region will receive almost 1.5 billion euros. In the coming months, the Flemish Region will open several grants to promote energy-saving projects.
Energy-saving projects
Green Power
The Flemish region will open the third Green Power call for proposals on 1 December, to promote energy-saving projects. With a budget of 5 million euros, the call will have two subcalls:
- €500,000 is earmarked for projects “Solar panels” with an investment capacity of more than 40 kW up to and including 2 MW, placed on marginal land and floating solar panels and wind turbines with a nominal capacity of more than 10 kW up to and including 300 kW.
- The remaining €4.5 billion will be focused on “Other Solar Panels” projects; more common solar projects that are not placed on marginal land and do not float on water features.
Ecology Premium Plus
The Flemish government aims to encourage companies to organise their processes in an environmentally friendly and energy-saving region by taking over part of the extra investment costs involved in these actions.
Companies investing in the Flemish Region are eligible for support and will receive a reimbursement of between 15 and 55% of the additional cost of the initial investment. This premium considers the following criteria:
- The size of the company
- The type of technology
- Ecogetal
- Additional costs
The total amount of grants awarded to a company is a maximum of €1.000.000 for a period of 3 years from the date of submission of the application.
Strategic ecologiesteun
Another energy-saving project, and in order to encourage both SMEs and large companies to invest in technologies that cannot be standardised due to their uniqueness and specificity, the Flemish regional government will soon open a Strategic ecologiesteun.
Companies will be eligible for subsidies of 20-40% depending on:
- The type of investment (environmental, energy, renewable energy and cogeneration).
- The ecoclass to which a technology belongs according to its ecology number;
- The size of the company.
The total amount of subsidies granted to a company is a maximum of €1.000.000 euros over a three-year period.
Green heat, residual heat and heat networks
In the near future, the Flemish Region will launch a new call for applications to promote investment in green heat, waste heat or a heat network. Both companies and other applicants from the target group can apply for this support.
The grants will support the following installations:
- Located in the Flemish region
- when there is no green energy or CHP certificates awarded.
- Which are not eligible for green support or strategic green support.
Green heat
- Investment of new useful new green heat installations with a gross thermal capacity of more than 300 kWth (or an extension of more than 300 kWth)
- of large-scale solar water heaters with an aperture area of more than 425 m², where only covered collectors are used, where the transparent insulating layer, not being greenhouse glazing, forms an integrated whole with the collector
- of well energy storage with or without a large-scale central heat pump
- cold-heat storage with or without large-scale central heat pumps
- water-to-water heat pumps where the evaporator takes heat from the energy-efficient district heating with a design supply temperature on the production side of the energy-efficient district heating between 20 °C and 70 °C, provided that the water-to-water heat pumps are energy-efficient district heating are submitted in the same application for support
- concentrated solar power (CST) with an opening area of more than 600 m².
Waste heat
- New or renovated installations
- the source of the heat is process heat, which is released from a process that either
- does not have the purpose of producing heat, electricity or mechanical energy
- or cannot be controlled in terms of the heat demand
- with respect to the application of the waste heat, it must be either
- an application that does not have the effect of reducing the use of already available waste heat
- an application that cannot lead to the award of green energy certificates or cogeneration certificates
- an additional use of waste heat for
- meeting the energy needs of another process
- maintaining stored substances at the appropriate temperature
- heating of residential or office buildings
- the heating of buildings, other than residential and office buildings, with the exception of the heating of these buildings by direct air heating
- the production of cooling where the useful waste heat is determined as the useful cooling produced divided by a reference coefficient of performance of 250%.
Heat network
Investments in energy-efficient heat networks. These are heat networks that use at least:
- 50% heat from renewable energy sources;
- 50% from a combination of renewable energy sources and waste heat;
- 75% of a combination of high-quality heat and power; 75% of a combination of CHP and waste heat; 75% of a combination of CHP and renewable energy sources;
- 75% of a combination of high quality CHP, green heat or waste heat.
CPT programme: Supporting (semi-) public load infrastructure projects
With the action plan ‘Clean Power for Transport (CPT)‘, the Flemish government wants to focus on the shift to zero-emission means of transport and means of transport powered by alternative fuels.
To implement the CPT programme, a number of projects related to charging infrastructure will soon be called for through annual calls for proposals.
Companies, local entities, and organisations can apply for this grant of maximum of 300,000 euros and maximum of 1,000 euros per charging point.
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Teresa Marina
