Share of renewable heat installations in Germany’s new buildings at 71% in 2021
Clean Energy Wire
More than two-thirds (70.7%) of the residential buildings completed in Germany in 2021 are heated entirely or partly with renewable energies, the federal statistical office (Destatis) has said in a press release. In 2015, the share of renewable heating installations in new builds was 61.5 percent -- the increase over 2020 was almost 2 percentage points. Half of the residential buildings completed in 2021 use heat pumps (up from 31.4% in 2015). The use of natural gas heating is declining in new buildings, from 51.5 percent in 2015 to 34.3 percent in 2021. Eight percent of the new residential buildings were primarily heated with district heating. Oil heating was used as primary heating in 611 new residential buildings only, which was 0.6 percent of the new buildings (2015: 1,195 or 1.1%).
Whilst the generous financial incentives to use renewable heating sources in new buildings in Germany are eagerly used by constructors, there is slow progress in changing heating systems in the over two-thirds of the existing building stock that is heated with fossil fuels (gas or oil). Although sales of heat pumps have picked up considerably over the past year – not least due to the Ukraine war, rising fossil fuel prices and the need to become independent from Russian fossil fuel imports – Germany is faced with a large backlog in heating efficiency refurbishments and electrification and looks set to miss its climate targets in the building sector.
