The influence of regulation, taxes and charges on the energy supply of buildings

Abstract

Nowadays, there are many technologies to supply buildings with heat, cooling and electricity as well as technologies for energy storage. With regard to the energy transition, it is needed to switch the energy supply to renewable resources, to apply energy storage to balance the volatile resources available and to link the different energy sectors with each other. However, the current structure of taxes and levies does not lead to the application of corresponding energy systems. The motivation of this research work is on the one hand to investigate the influence of current regulation, taxes and charges on energy carriers on building energy systems. Furthermore, the aim is to show which regulatory approaches represent the most cost-effective solutions for energy supply that lead to carbon dioxide (CO2) neutrality and also to the use of energy storage systems. A mixed-integer linear programming is used to optimise the different supply components considering variable electricity tariffs. The perspective of the analysis is on the individual building. Since the use of district heating is not an individual economic decision and district heating plays a minor role apart from e.g. some northern European countries, it was not considered in the studies presented here. In the studies, technologies for the use and storage of renewable energy were considered that can be integrated into individual buildings and are subject to an individual economic decision. Technologies that cannot be integrated into buildings but are essential for the energy transition, such as wind energy, are integrated indirectly via the flexible electricity price determined by the merit order. Here, government forecasts and scenarios as well as various concepts for the taxation of energy sources had been considered. A new method for the estimation of investment costs between 2015 and 2050 is developed and applied. The paper shows how an optimal building energy supply would look like under changed legal framework conditions as well as different tax burdens and reliefs. The paper concludes with a series of inferences and recommendations for adapted regulation to achieve the goals of defossilisation of the building sector.