Hladík: We will contribute to people’s renovation of their grandmother’s house – News

We are adding new lines of support rather than changing anything fundamentally. We will definitely add support for low-income households in apartment buildings, because they have a great potential for energy savings, for example in insulation, replacement of windows, installation of photovoltaics and heating.

There will also be a comprehensive renovation of the so-called grandmother’s house, we will add some components, such as replacing the old atmospheric gas boilers with heat pumps.

This range of options should be available from September.

They will concern low-income households, whether in houses with a community of owners, with cooperatives or owned by natural or legal persons. And especially low-income families.

There are thousands of properties in towns and cities that are not inhabited. We want to ensure that the agricultural land fund is not unnecessarily blocked by new buildings, which in addition to them means additional kilometers of sidewalks, roads, sewers, and public lighting, which municipalities and cities must then maintain.

That’s why we want to offer the possibility for people to repair the unused houses, even if they don’t have the money at the moment. At the same time, we want those houses to be insulated, to have photovoltaic panels and a heat pump.

Renovation incentives will be a combination of energy savings subsidies and home renovation loans. I won’t tell you the specific parameters now. I will elaborate on these as we introduce the program sometime in the coming weeks or months.

We have already tested the deposit system in the New Green Savings Light project, within the framework of which low-income households can insulate their houses. It works very well, so we want to continue to offer this pre-financing option. Until now, the applicant had to implement the project and then only received a subsidy from the state. In the future, he will receive at least part of the money in advance.

As for those loans, we can provide them from the State Environmental Fund, but we also have the option of providing them from a loan taken by the Czech Republic. And of course we can involve the banking sector.

From the National Recovery Plan. This means from the resources available to the European Union for loans to individual member states. A part of these funds could be allocated in such a way that it rotates in long-term loans to residents in connection with warming, reducing energy savings, replacing heating sources, and so on.

Since it is not yet finalized, I do not want to say the final amount.

We made some changes after Russia’s attack on Ukraine came. As a result, gas boilers were dropped from boiler subsidies. But we certainly don’t leave out electricity for heating.

It will continue to be supported in New Green Savings, but as a comprehensive solution. We do not want the transition from a coal or gas boiler to mean higher expenses for the household. When switching to electric heating, we need a comprehensive renovation, including replacement of windows, insulation, so that when people switch from gas boilers to electric heating, they do not end up paying even more for energy.

I want to emphasize that nothing is definitively approved. It is some sort of kick-off on the part of the European Parliament, and now discussions will take place at the level of the European Council and individual member states. Only subsequently will such legislation be introduced or not.

The position of the Ministry of the Environment and the government is that incentives for owners of family and apartment buildings to insulate are much better than restrictions. This is something that the government is doing and will continue to do to a much greater extent.

We want to offer owners the opportunity for anyone who wants to be able to reduce energy expenses themselves and use energy self-sufficiency. This means that he can produce and consume energy either in his own house or near his home. So he used the principle of a close community, whether it refers to the seat, village, city or intravillage as such.

It is certainly not my position, nor that of the government. But yes, we have great potential in savings. In family and apartment buildings, perhaps half of all energy consumed today can be saved. The Czech Republic will now have enough financial resources to be able to co-finance these savings and the transition to new types of sources, whether it concerns heat pumps, photovoltaic power plants, the use of gray water and others.

I am talking about recycling the water that we use, for example, for washing in the bathroom, in such a way that it can be used further in the house. Typically for flushing the toilet.

Today, the voluntary option already exists in the legislation, and no one uses it. That’s probably the answer. If it is to be implemented, of course it has to be widespread and mandatory, there has to be good infrastructure for it and it has to work in a win-win way. That is, both the environment and people, as well as producers, business chains, and above all municipalities and cities.

We are preparing the system so that it is a comprehensive solution that will shift the way of waste management towards recycling. The waste is not here to be landfilled or burned, but for secondary use.

I don’t want to say the amount up front. But I assume that the three-crown deposit on beer bottles here is twenty years. It’s some minimal amount. But what will be the definitive one, let’s wait for that, please. The method of backup is essential – that it is properly set up, that it allows a high level of recycling and that we recognize it in the environment, in nature. In other words, so that we no longer meet petka and cans in escarpments and forests.

This is not so much a question of merchants, but of what is technically possible to recycle today. It is true that packaging from some types of drinks, such as milk, is not recyclable today or is not recyclable for use in the food chain. So it is of course possible to expect other approaches there.

Currently, probably not, but we can certainly logically expect this principle of backup systems in the future. It’s a modern trend that brings frugality with it.

We will never prevent some malicious act that took place now. But the Czech Republic and the Czech Switzerland National Park are secured in different ways. Among other things, there is an agreement between the departments of the environment, the interior and agriculture to ensure aerial firefighting or to change access to forest land, whether it concerns national parks or commercial forest.

If the government decides so, then yes. We will now submit the material to the interdepartmental comment procedure.

Both ways. I own a piece of forest in Vysočina, I inherited some and bought some. It is after the bark beetle calamity and I decided to leave the trees there that grew by themselves – birches and pines, spruce. And I plant some trees in it, such as fir, oak, beech, or larch.

It is necessary to distinguish between the territory of national parks and economic forest. I own a commercial forest. The no-intervention zones have their great value mainly for biodiversity and the number of unique species that live and grow on those trees, whether fallen or withered. A healthy forest is one that has different ages, is not single-species, or was not all planted in the same year. The variety of both species and age is much more natural thanks to non-interference.

Bark is a natural part of our forests. He’s always been here and always will be. And actually, in the economy, it naturally helps to get rid of weaker pieces, if it is in some reasonable amount.

Whether or not there will be a bark beetle calamity is largely determined by the weather in any given year. Because the bark beetle loves drought, when the forest or trees cannot protect it by watering. So what the next few summers will look like, whether they will be dry or not, will also largely determine the amount of stands attacked by the bark beetle.

The Germans haven’t approved it yet, but they are really considering banning the purchase of gas boilers from January 2024. We’ll see where the discussion goes, but we certainly don’t want to go in that direction.

The gradual transition from coal is now a big task for the Czech Republic. We have to realize that the Czech heating industry or household heating is a little different. We have about four and a half million residents on central heating, so for us it will be more of a transition to a combination of gas sources: gas plus hydrogen, or gas plus renewable sources. Or gas plus some form of biomass.

I will not comment on the cries that appear in the media. Once we discuss it within the coalition, we will announce the outcome. But for the KDU-ČSL in the long term, things related to the support of families and children, so that they emerge as winners from the economic transformation, are absolutely essential.

In the discussion, we will defend the maintenance of three VAT rates. We are ready to discuss its amount. We certainly support both the principle of savings and the principle of additional income to the state budget.

There are some areas like vice taxes, like alcohol. Or unnecessary things like gambling. But, of course, this also applies to the taxation of legal entities and so on.