Heat pump applications are plummeting
Two thirds of homeowners do not want to renovate
November 28, 2023, 1:01 a.m
The months-long dispute over the heating law has not been good for German homeowners’ desire to renovate. Data from an authority in the Habeck Ministry shows a drastic drop in heat pump funding. Two thirds of citizens who own their own home no longer want to make energy-efficient renovations.
Germany’s homeowners are currently showing little enthusiasm for energy-efficient renovation of their houses and apartments. According to the Funke newspapers, the Federal Office of Economics and Export Control (BAFA) is currently hardly registering any funding applications for a new heat pump. The authority, which reports to Robert Habeck’s Federal Ministry of Economics, counted 6,801 applications this October. A total of 76,471 applications for funding for heat pumps were submitted between January and October of this year. The year before, homeowners filed a total of 315,835 applications during the same period, the report said. That’s more than four times as many.
Sales of thermal insulation composite systems for external walls also plummeted accordingly. According to the Association for Insulation Systems, Plaster and Mortar (VDPM), demand fell by almost a quarter (almost 23 percent) in the third quarter of 2023 compared to the same period last year. A negative development that had been apparent throughout the year: In the first quarter of this year, sales fell by a good 17 percent compared to the same period last year, and in the second quarter by 13.5 percent. In absolute numbers, this means: Last year, almost 36 million square meters of building space was insulated with thermal insulation composite systems. According to association calculations, only a good 29 million square meters will have been newly insulated this year. In view of the ongoing negative development, the association does not expect a trend reversal next year.
Survey: A third reject renovation outright
A YouGov survey, which is available to the Funke newspapers, also shows great disillusionment with renovation: Two thirds of Germans (66 percent) do not want to renovate their houses and apartments to make them more energy efficient. Based on all homeowners in the country, that’s 16.1 million people. The reasons given by 32 percent of those surveyed were that they flatly rejected the energy upgrade of their house; 34 percent said they were unable to bear the financial costs of the renovation. Only 20 percent of those surveyed want to make energy-efficient renovations and feel they are financially able to do so.
23 percent of those surveyed also stated that they were willing to move out of their own four walls and sell them in order not to have to make energy-saving renovations. If the property owners then decided to take energy-saving renovation measures, 35 percent of those surveyed would replace the heating, 30 percent would replace the windows, 27 and 25 percent would insulate the roof or facade and 17 and 16 percent would insulate the basement ceiling or false ceilings. Multiple answers were possible.
The representative survey by YouGov was conducted on behalf of the Society for Sustainable Real Estate (GNIW), for which 1,001 homeowners in Germany were surveyed via an online survey.