In the Green Savings program, several billion may be missing

Prague - Up to nine billion crowns may be missing from the Green Savings program for subsidies to applicants for financial resources. This is reported today by the server Parlamentní listy, referencing several internal materials and analyses from the Ministry of the Environment that it has at its disposal. New Minister Tomáš Chalupa criticizes the project as poorly managed from the beginning, and the department is facing criticism from those seeking financial support for building insulation and ecological heating, who are unhappy with the lengthy processing of applications.
    According to the server, the program will lack funds for subsidies in the range of five to eight billion crowns. Some estimates even speak of up to nine billion, although the final number is not clear. The first deputy minister Rut Bízková stated as recently as December 16, 2010, that the excess was only between three and five billion crowns.
    According to an analysis by the Consulting Center for Green Savings from January 20 this year, the fund is unable to evaluate 75,000 applications in the foreseeable future, and the numbers it is currently working with are merely mathematical averages for several thousand applications. "It is important to point out that the current administration and approval process is no longer sustainable... Financial resources have clearly been exhausted and they are certainly insufficient," the server quotes from the analysis.
    Of those 75,000 applications, approximately 37,000 have been approved so far, according to available information. Last year, about two billion crowns were allocated from the program for home insulation, and the year before that 3.3 million crowns.
    The Green Savings program started in April two years ago and is intended to support energy savings and the use of renewable energy sources in residential buildings. It is financed from the sale of emission credits, with the ministry having thus far obtained 19.6 billion crowns in this way.