BENCHMARKING DISTRICT HEATING IN HUNGARY, POLAND, LITHUANIA, ESTONIA AND FINLAND
In district heating, there are some systematic efforts to establish regulatory benchmarking, for example by National Control Commission for Prices and Energy in Lithuania. The objective of this survey has not been to evaluate the current frameworks thus we have not included any in-depth analysis of Lithuanian benchmarking in this report. One limitation of benchmarking can be the fact that within one country there don't exist well comparable DH companies with whom the relevant benchmarking could be done. For example, in many countries there only are few major DH companies and it may be difficult to find similar companies in one country. Thus the regulators should look for cross-border co-operation with other countries having comparable DH companies for benchmarking purpose.
This survey has also been a pilot nature co-effort between ERRA and Fortum and will establish an important step for future dialogue between regulators and heating industry to balance their objectives and to look for regulatory best-practices for district heating (market regimes, pricing, benchmarking). With this background, we want to emphasize the following key findings and further conclusions.