Item

Abstract

By linking information on the building stock, final energy demand, detailed information on the socio-economic characteristics of households, and repeated systematic surveys, the newly established German Heating and Housing Panel (GHHP) enables a well-founded evaluation of the effectiveness of climate policy measures in the heating sector in Germany. This paper presents the most important descriptive results of the first panel survey among about 15,000 private households from 2021. Besides the inevitable comprehensive query of building characteristics and heating technology, the focus of the first survey was on the energy-related building modernization activities of private households, as well as on the evaluation and acceptance of climate protection instruments in the building sector. In addition, the acceptance of different ways of allocating the cost burden of the CO2 pricing introduced at the beginning of 2021 was investigated. The key findings include that the distribution of the cost burden of the CO2 pricing according to the energy efficiency of buildings enjoys the highest level of approval among respondents. With respect to the acceptance of climate protection instruments in the building sector, it is noteworthy that a ban on the installation of gas boilers and a building climate levy only meet with the approval of around 30% of respondents, while a ban on the installation of oil boilers is welcomed by almost 70% of respondents. Surprisingly, only about 20% of those who reject the ban on the installation of oil boilers heat with oil, while this ban is rejected by a larger proportion of about 30% of those who heat with gas. Asked about their level of information on CO2 pricing, almost half of all respondents say they are rather uninformed, and only a very small proportion of 3.4% of respondents feel very well informed. The situation is similar with respect to energy-related building modernization: Just over half of the owners do not feel well informed about energy-efficient refurbishments.