New Report: About time, old CHAP

How the Cooling & Heating Action Plan can decarbonise cooling, break down policy silos, and reduce air pollution

In July 2026, the European Commission published its long-awaited Electrification Action Plan (EAP). Its opening framing set the tone for Europe’s current energy challenge: it declared that since the outbreak of war between the United States and Iran, Europe had paid north of 50 billion euros more for imported fossil fuels, than it would have paid for the same amount of fuel before the war-driven price shock.

Originally, the Electrification Action Plan was going to be published alongside a dedicated Heating and Cooling Strategy. While this did not happen, the EAP did include commitments to deliver several heating-related policy packages as standalone pieces, chief amongst those, a Cooling and Heating Action Plan (CHAP).

The CHAP is well-positioned to address two yet-unexplored aspects of Europe’s heating & cooling transition, namely: our rapidly escalating demand for cooling, as well as the still untapped synergies between clean heat deployment and efforts to reduce air pollution.

• 55,5% of household heating was supplied by fossil fuels in 2024

• 21,2% of household heating was supplied by biomass combustion in 2024

• The firewood slice of Europe’s heat fuel mix made up 73% of the renewable-labelled half of the total fuel mix.

• EU households’ cooling demand has doubled over the last six years and will continue to rise many times over already by 2030.

Please read the report to learn more about how Europe can use the CHAP to:

• Establish an energy system which offers efficient and affordable cooling solutions

• Leverage synergies and linkages between Air Quality legislation, energy policy and other EU policy work streams by

• Take stock of all relevant next steps for implementing Green Deal legislation, as demand signals for clean heat deployment