Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Climate Protection
2023
By 2045, Germany, and thus the buildings sector, must become climate-neutral – as intended by the Federal Climate Protection Act. Along with the opening summary of climate protection in January 2022, the BMWK had announced the development of a buildings strategy for climate neutrality. The aim is to ensure the optimal interaction of policy instruments on energy efficiency in the buildings sector and heat generation from renewable energy sources.
A consortium of nine renowned research institutes has drawn up a background paper to provide scientific support for strategy development. The paper combines scientific findings on the climate neutrality of the buildings sector, identifies a total of twelve areas of action, and backs them up with concrete recommendations and measures.
Prognos coordinated the overall project and, as part of the scientific consortium, worked decisively on the target picture, the target scenario, and on individual groups of measures.
A central basis for the work was the analysis of existing scientific studies and transformation paths on the climate neutrality of Germany and the buildings sector. The analysis includes, among other things, the scenarios of the five major studies known as the “Big 5” of climate neutrality scenarios:
In addition, we have continuously integrated current scientific findings from the BMWK’s system development strategy into the work.
On the basis of these evaluations, with our partners we have developed a qualitative target picture with which the buildings sector can achieve climate neutrality by 2045. The central insight of this process: The pressure to act is great and the scope for implementation is now reduced – especially for the intermediate goals for 2030. This is due to insufficient GHG savings in recent years.
The evaluation makes it clear:
A total of twelve areas of action for a climate-neutral building stock were derived from the target image. For these areas of action, the consortium has developed and assessed the impact of a set of policy instruments. With the help of Prognos’ energy system models, we have also exemplified the target picture and translated it into target figures for the central areas of action and policy instruments.
Due to the now rather limited time span until 2030 and 2045 respectively, the project team has concluded that there is an acute need for action in all areas examined:
The background paper is the result of the strategic scientific consultation on climate-neutral building stock for the BMWK and outlines what is, in the view of the participating research institutes, the need for action from a scientific perspective.
Background paper on buildings strategy Climate neutrality 2045 (BMWK website in German)
Background paper on the energy efficiency strategy for buildings (2015) in German
Project team: Andreas Kemmler, Paurnima Kulkarni, Dominik Rau (PL), Noha Saad, Malek Sahnoun, Nils Thamling (PL)
Last update: 15.03.2023
Principal
Senior Project Manager
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Prognos is one of the oldest economic research centres in Europe. Founded at the University of Basel, Prognos experts have been conducting research for a wide range of clients from the public and private sectors since 1959 – politically independent, scientifically sound.