With the Heating Act, the Green-led Federal Ministry of Economics wanted to make progress in the heat transition and thus in climate protection. But demand, especially for heat pumps, is falling.
Demand for new heating systems has continued to fall in Germany. According to the Federal Association of the German Heating Industry (BDH), sales in the first five months of the current year fell by 39 percent compared to the same period last year, to 325,000. The decline was particularly severe for heat pumps, where the number of heat pumps sold halved to 74,000. Gas and pellet heating systems were also sold significantly less. Oil heating systems, on the other hand, increased by a quarter to 47,500 – these systems therefore accounted for around a seventh of the market.
The association attributed the overall development to the reluctance to buy, which had resulted from the discussions about the heating law of the traffic light coalition in the federal government. “There is still a lot of uncertainty about modernizing heating systems,” explains BDH General Manager Markus Staudt. In addition, too little is known about which technical solutions the law allows.
The federal government’s goal of installing 500,000 heat pumps annually in Germany from 2024 will probably be missed by a long shot: the association predicts sales of just 200,000 heat pumps by the end of the year. Staudt complains that companies have invested billions in some cases to build up additional production capacity. The association representative called on politicians to take “the quickest possible action.”
Source: Stern
