The green tax shift: heating oil and gas get more expensive, electricity gets cheaper.

The various governments in Belgium seem to have agreed on a tax shift from electricity to gas and heating oil. As a result, those who heat today with fossil fuels will soon pay more and those who heat electrically with a heat pump will pay less.

Heating your home with a heat pump is the most sustainable solution. But those who do it this way today pay more tax on energy costs than those who do it with gas or fuel oil. The energy ministers want to eliminate this reverse logic. Minister Bart Tommelein already speaks plainly: "If the tax shift is not in the energy pact, it will be a bad pact".

There is more tax on gas and fuel oil because historically it was not interesting to heat with electricity. The efficiency of that used to be very low: energy is lost between the power plant and your house, and there was no efficient technology, once in the house, to heat everything. With the advent of heat pumps, which are very energy efficient, that is changing. Because of the fact that a heat pump uses the energy already present in nature, 1kW of heat requires only 0.25kW of electricity. That's 1 in 4. Moreover, with the continued growth of solar energy, generation is also becoming more environmentally friendly, sustainable and local. These are all reasons to choose a heat pump (and ) in abundance today.

Choice stress? Our minister has his advice for that too: "Anyone who has to buy a new heating system today had better not choose gas. They should choose a heat pump. Especially if he can combine it with solar panels."

Source: www.livios.be , 13/11/2017