Three in four homes in Germany still heated with fossil fuels
taz / Die Welt / Clean Energy Wire
Fossil fuels are still being used to heat three quarters of homes in Germany, with renewable sources like wood and heat pumps making up only 7 percent of the total, newspaper Tageszeitung (taz) reported. The data comes from the Federal Statistical Office’s (Destatis) most recent census performed in 2022, of which first results were made available only in June this year. Homes heated by gas make up 52 percent of the total, with oil second at 19 percent. Differences exist geographically across Germany – in the north, more apartments are heated with gas, in the south with oil. In eastern Germany, the average share of district heating was found to be much higher than in western states. The age of the building also plays a role, with 57 percent of new builds in 2022 being warmed by heat pumps, reports Taz. “Overall, heat pumps so far play only a small role,” said Oliver Heidinger, President of the State Office for Information and Technology in North Rhine-Westphalia, to newspaper Die Welt.
At the end of February, a new initiative from the state development bank KfW allowed single-family home owners to receive up to 55 percent of the installation costs of a heat hump, reports Die Welt. Apartment owners were allowed to enter the scheme from May. The Federation of the German Heating Industry (BDH) said that the support will have little impact. In the first quarter of the year, sales of heat pumps fell by 52 percent in comparison to the same period in 2023, which is representative of a broader slump in the market. “We have not yet seen a reversal of this trend,” Markus Staudt, CEO of the BDH, told the newspaper.
The heating industry has previously criticised the government’s approach to the heating transition, saying the long, drawn-out political process has caused people to lose confidence in the ability of the government coalition of chancellor Olaf Scholz to manage decarbonisation challenges. Originally, a broad ban on fossil fuel heating systems was planned for 2024, an intervention that later has been delayed by several years, following a loud public backlash against the heating transition law. While the number of heat pump installations is increasing across Europe, Germany’s heating industry faces tough competition from North American and Asian heat pump manufacturers.
