A revised version of the Czyste Powietrze programme has applied since 20 July 2026. Most of the changes widen access, but one changes what you are able to propose to a client, and it takes effect at the start of 2027 - months away, not a season.
Legal position as at 21 August 2026, checked against the NFOŚiGW announcement of the changes from 20 July 2026 and the questions and answers for this round.
What comes off the list
From 2027, electric heating other than heat pumps is withdrawn from qualifying costs. NFOŚiGW names, in its answer to question 25: heating mats, electric boilers, electric radiators, electric underfloor heating. The list is open - it is introduced with "e.g." and closed with "etc." - so the criterion decides rather than the enumeration: no electric heating other than a heat pump will be funded. A transition period runs to the end of 2026.
Note what is absent from that list. A heat pump runs on electricity too and stays - because it moves heat from the surroundings rather than converting electricity into heat outright. The distinction is not a formality: for the same electricity a heat pump delivers several times the heat of a heating mat, and that is the entire reason one form of funding survives and the other does not.
What stays
From 2027 the eligible sources are heat pumps, pellet boilers and wood-gasifying boilers, provided the specific device is entered on the ZUM list of approved equipment and materials. Being on ZUM is a condition of eligibility - a device that is not listed does not become eligible by meeting the parameters.
The same round clarified when that listing has to hold, which is the question an installer meets in practice more often than the list itself. If a device is suspended or removed from ZUM before the final invoice is issued, it stays eligible provided it was listed on the date of the advance invoice for its purchase or installation, and a final invoice for that device is presented for settlement. A device dropping off the list mid-project does not, on its own, cost the grant.
What it changes in practice
An electric mat under the tiles was a convenient answer to two problems: a cold bathroom floor, and a room that is awkward to reach with pipework. From 2027 that answer stops being co-funded, and a client who was counting on the grant pays for it in full.
Water-based underfloor heating is unaffected. It is an emitter rather than a heat source - and if the source is a heat pump from the ZUM list, the whole installation stays in the programme. So the practical conclusion for anything scheduled for 2027 or later is simple: electric underfloor heating stops being a funded option and water-based underfloor heating does not.
If a project has a bathroom where a mat looked like the only sensible answer, it is worth checking whether a water loop fits after all. Bathrooms have an advantage here that is easy to forget: the permissible floor surface temperature is higher than in living rooms, so a square metre delivers considerably more power. How much more, and what it depends on, is covered in the article on flow temperature.
What the 20 July change does not contain
Trade press reported alongside this that gas boilers were dropped from the programme on 20 July 2026. That change is not in this round - and not because gas boilers stay. The NFOŚiGW announcement names six areas of change: easier access to the programme, 10% higher rates for selected thermal-upgrade works, an extension from 120 to 180 days for work covered by an advance payment, a wider group of people able to confirm completed work, the option of preparing a draft application in the grant application generator, and the changes to heat sources and the ZUM list described above.
The same announcement lists the absence of funding for gas boilers separately - among the rules that continue unchanged from the reform of 31 March 2025. So the date from the press is wrong, but the conclusion that a gas boiler cannot be funded from the programme today is right - just sixteen months older than reported.
The distinction matters on site in both directions: an installer repeating the date from the press hands a client a deadline the programme does not have, while an installer who dismisses the whole report as rumour may conclude a gas boiler is still a qualifying cost.
An audit is not a heat load calculation
The changes bring back a question worth closing for good: a heat load calculation does not stand in for an energy audit. The energy audit is among the rules the NFOŚiGW announcement lists as continuing to apply. The application needs the audit and its summary document (DPAE) - carrying the EU, EK and EP indicators computed under the energy-certificate methodology, signed by a person entered in the register named in art. 31 ust. 1 pkt 1 of the ustawa o charakterystyce energetycznej budynków, that is, the register of people entitled to issue energy performance certificates.
A heat load calculation is a different quantity in a different unit: design heat load in kilowatts, from which the heat source is sized and the installation designed. Neither substitutes for the other in either direction, and an installer not on the register cannot sign a DPAE however well they have calculated the building.
The promised audit voucher is still not running. NFOŚiGW says the scheme needs further work after consultations and is to be introduced once further arrangements with municipalities are settled, with the launch currently planned for the end of 2026 or the start of 2027. Until then the applicant pays for the audit and settles it later as a qualifying cost.
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