Oil and gas boiler sales are soaring in Germany in anticipation of 2024 ban

New oil and gas heating systems are seeing a sales boom in Germany ahead of a planned law that could ban the installation of fossil heating systems by 2024. According to the Federation of the German Heating Industry (BDH), about 168,000 gas and 21,500 oil systems were sold between January and April, an increase of 14 percent and 100 percent, respectively. “Trust in gas heating is increasing,” the BDH said, after sales of the technology dipped in the aftermath of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, which resulted in a spike in gas prices. At the same time, sales of electric heat pumps increased by 111 percent to 96,500 units, while bioenergy heating system sales grew 7 percent to 20,500, the BDH said. Total sales of heating systems increased by 38 percent since the beginning of the year. “We are concerned about the imbalance in growth,” BDH head Markus Staudt said. “While heat pump manufacturers are working at the limit, there is still great potential in biomass, which as a climate-neutral and renewable energy source can also make an important contribution to the heating transition,” he said.

Heat pumps are significantly more expensive than fossil heating systems and sometimes require additional and costly retrofittings to function properly. While the government plans to support heat pump buyers financially, the details of the support scheme are still unclear, leaving customers in the dark about the total costs of installing a decarbonised heating system.