Latvia’s government supported the approval of allocation of EUR 20.4 million towards compensation of increasing heating costs for households.
Households become eligible for support if they use electricity, wood granules, wood briquettes and firewood for heating.
Funding will be provided also partially compensate administrative costs related to registration and review of related applications.
As previously reported, the Law on Measures to Reduce Extraordinary Increase in Energy Prices provides a number of measures for partial compensation of heating costs for households.
It is planned that to reduce the negative socioeconomic effect on residents’ income that comes from the unexpected rapid rise of energy prices.
The price of electricity in offers of energy traders exceeds 0.1 EUR/kWh. Estimates indicate this trend will most likely increase even more during the heating season. This is why an electricity price cap has been set, above which households will be compensated 50% of electricity costs – 0.16 EUR/kWh.
Support for the coverage of electricity costs is intended for households that use electricity for heating.
Considering the growing costs of granules and briquettes and the consumption of granules and briquettes in heating individual homes, a price cap of 300 EUR/t was imposed on these types of fuels. Compensation of costs will be applied from this price cap. This threshold was set based on the median of the centralised heating energy tariff and heating energy costs – 70 EUR/MWh.
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Similarly to other forms of support the increase of prices of granules or briquettes will be compensated at 50% if costs exceed 300 EUR/t, but no more than 100 EUR/t. A threshold of consumption support is set per household – 10 tonnes of briquettes or granules, which was calculated based on the average area of households heated by pellet/briquette heating system.
The law also provides support to households so they can procure firewood.
As previously reported, to help reduce energy resource consumption on indoor heating, Latvia’s government permitted reducing indoor heating temperature and hot water temperature this season.