Government okays action plan for biomass

Prague, Sept 12 (CTK) - The government Wednesday approved action plan for biomass for the years 2012 - 2020 which solves the future of this renewable energy source in the Czech Republic, Jakub Stadler of the government's press department said after the cabinet meeting.

The document is aimed at defining biomass benefits and enabling its more effective use. It recommends use of biomass in particular in combined production of electricity and heat.

Financial support to biomass should motivate operators of these energy sources to higher effectiveness. Biomass should also be used more for heating in households instead of coal, the document says.

Biomass use is more expensive than burning of coal and it is therefore necessary to subsidise it as part of renewable energy sources. However, the financial support should be more effective, the action plan recommends. The current system of support can be labelled as uncoordinated and environmentally counterproductive, it says.

Biomass use has been growing in the Czech Republic in the last few years and the updated energy strategy reckons with new larger local sources as well as biomass use in households.

Some 15,000 automatic boilers for wooden pellets with output up to 50 kilowatts are used in Czech households. Total installed output of biomass sources is over 1,600 megawatts and it is the second largest renewable energy source.

Photovoltaic plants have installed output at nearly 2,000 megawatts.

The government Wednesday interrupted talks about updating of state energy strategy, which counts on wider use of nuclear energy, for two weeks, Prime Minister Petr Necas said at a press conference after the cabinet meeting.

The energy strategy is an important and long document and the government needs more time to evaluate it, Necas explained but at the same time rejected the demand of ecologists that expert evaluation of its impacts on the environment should be made before the strategy's approval.

The new energy strategy is to set the direction which the Czech energy industry will take in the coming twenty to thirty years. After the construction of new units in nuclear power plants Temelin and Dukovany, over a half of the country's electricity production should come from nuclear power plants.

The government also interrupted talks about the Czech Republic's raw material strategy which admits the possibility that limits on coal mining could be broken in the future. The Czech Republic can make do with the coal it has till the year 2035 without breaking the limits.

The government Wednesday also approved an analysis proposing transfer of money from Operational Programme Education for Competitiveness to Operational Programme Human Resources and Employment, according to the government's website.

The amount of money to be transferred is Kc1bn this year and Kc1.6bn in 2013. The document has been prepared by the Local Development Ministry.

At the beginning of July, Necas said the programme Education for Competitiveness had many problems and it was not sure that all the money would be drawn from it.