Raciechowice as one of the ten Polish municipalities was awarded in the competition for the best and most innovative projects for energy efficiency and use of renewable energy sources inspired by Norwegian best practices or possible to implement using Norwegian experience.

The contest was organized under the umbrella project "Polish-Norwegian cooperation platform for climate and energy conservation". The goal of the micro-project prepared by Raciechowice was development of the pre-investment feasibility study based on the assumptions of the audits carried out in 9 public utility buildings from the territory of the Raciechowice municipality (4 schools, 2 centers for people with special needs, 2 office buildings and 1 cultural center). The study will include identification of the optimum solutions for improvement of energy efficiency in analyzed buildings, which will be based on the assessment of their technical condition and will focus on means improving the efficiency of the heating system.

Main objective of the innovative project is to change the heat source in selected public buildings of the Raciechowice municipality. Oil-fired boilers will be replaced with heat pumps supported by PV installations and internal lighting in these buildings will be replaced with LED lamps.

The project will make use of the modern technological solutions. It includes implementation of the comprehensive operation, monitoring and control system. PV installation will be equipped with the electricity output meter, while heat pumps will have meters measuring electricity consumption and heat production. Data from the meters will be sent to the Town Hall via Internet and will be administered by the person responsible for the monitoring process. Change of the heating source in the buildings will be accompanied with the modernisation of internal lighting in order to reduce electricity consumption. After implementing both solutions, the buildings should be able to produce nearly 100% of energy that they use.

On 10th of October 2016 a letter of intent was signed between the municipalities of Raciechowice and Oslo concerning sharing expertise and experience in the field of renewable energy.

The representative of Oslo visited Raciechowice on 16-18th of November. He had the opportunity to learn about the municipality's plans of replacing the heat sources and to see the state of art in the selected facilities. In his opinion, the idea of resigning from heating oil and replacing it with heat pumps has a real chance for success. He also gave some valuable tips on current operation and offered assistance in verifying the technical documentation received from the contractor.

Raciechowice is a small municipality with approx. 6200 inhabitants, located in the southern part of Poland. It is considered as the environmentally friendly municipality and for many years now it has been involved in many ecological initiatives. The identified problem is the lack of natural gas distribution network in the municipality, which results in the fact that all public buildings are heated with individual oil-fired boilers. The boilers are already quite old and emit significant amounts of CO2, sulphur compounds and solid particulates. Moreover, traditional lighting installations consume large amount of electricity.


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Project "Polish-Norwegian cooperation platform for climate and energy conservation" is funded under the PL04 Programme of the Bilateral Cooperation Fund, which is financed from the Norwegian Financial Mechanism (NMF) 2009-2014.