Domestic Environmental Funding Program (UFI)

Targeted funding supports sustainable projects that significantly shape Austria’s energy and climate future. Every euro invested triggers extensive follow-up investments and paves the way for new innovations.

In 2024, the Domestic Environmental Funding Program achieved the following:

• Supported 3,550 projects

• Triggered an investment volume of around Euro 672 million

• Secured federal funding of Euro 154 million

• Generated Euro 544 million in added value

• Created or secured around 3,400 jobs

• Contributed to a CO₂ reduction of 312,000 tons per year

• Achieved energy savings of 272,000 MWh per year

The “Renovation Offensive” includes the funding campaign “Out of Oil and Gas,” which has been accelerating the phase-out of fossil fuel heating systems since 2018. There is great potential to avoid climate-damaging CO₂ emissions in space heating — both through renovations (funding campaign “Renovation Bonus”) and by switching heating systems. In 2024:

• 79,741 projects were supported, including around 58,300 heating system replacements and about 350 corporate projects

• Triggered an investment volume of EuroR 3.4 billion

• Secured federal funding of Euro 1.4 billion

• Achieved a CO₂ reduction of 477,000 tons per year

• Realized energy savings of 864,000 MWh per year

Of the 58,299 approved heating system replacement applications in 2024 within the Renovation Offensive:

• The majority of new climate-friendly heating systems are heat pumps (50.9 percent)

• Biomass is now used in a large share of the supported heating system conversions (39.2 percent)

• Approximately 9.9 percent switched to district or local heating

• Most replaced systems were natural gas heating (46 percent), followed by heating oil (40.3 percent) and all-burner/coal/coke heating systems (11.3 percent)

• Electric heating systems accounted for 2.4 percent of replacements