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PROPERTY

Germany’s heat subsidies now available to all homeowners

This year, homeowners in Germany can apply for subsidies for environmentally friendly heating systems. The third wave of applications opened Tuesday, meaning all eligible groups can now apply.

Published: 27 August 2024 10:31 CEST
heat pump installation
Heat engineers remove a gas boiler after installing a heat pump (left). Homeowners who switch to a new heat pump can benefit from an initial subsidy, as well as lower energy costs in the long term. Photo: picture alliance/dpa/STIEBEL ELTRON | STIEBEL ELTRON

As of Tuesday, all home and apartment owners can apply for state subsidies for the replacement of old gas and oil heating systems with more climate-friendly heat pumps.

This includes landlords of single-family homes, as well as companies and municipalities.

This marks the third and final funding round of the Heating Act, with all eligible groups now able to apply. 

Earlier this year, applications had opened to private owners of apartment buildings and owner-occupied single-family homes, as well as condominium owners’ associations with central heating.

Grants cover up to 70 percent of replacement costs

The heating grants are designed to cover at least 30 percent of the costs to replace an oil or gas burner with a heat pump system for both residential or commercial buildings.

In some cases up to 70 percent of the instalment costs could be covered, depending on your income, and the speed and implementation of the heating system replacement. 

For owners who live in their property themselves and have up to €40,000 of taxable annual household income, the basic 30 percent subsidy generally applies.

By 2028, a speed bonus of 20 percent will be added for the early replacement of old gas and oil heating systems as well as night storage heaters and old biomass heating systems. 

There is also an efficiency bonus of an additional five percent for heat pumps that use water, soil or wastewater as a heat source, and those that use a natural refrigerant.

The heating law is not yet meeting expectations

According to Germany’s new heating law, starting this year 65 percent of newly installed heating systems should be powered by renewable energies. But the regulations initially only apply to new buildings in new development areas. Functioning heating systems can be left alone.

According to the Federal Ministry of Economics (BMWK), around 93,000 applications for heating grants have been approved so far. 

The BMWK expects an increase in applicants for funding following the opening of grants to the remaining groups. 

Overall the number of subsidies granted per month has increased since they opened in February, but is far below expectations.

Sales of heat pumps in Germany collapsed at the end of July this year, according to the Federal Association of the German Heating Industry (BDH). In the first half of 2024, 90,000 heat pumps were sold, which was 54 percent less compared to the same period in 2023, which had been a record year for the sale of heat pumps. 

The BMWK cited pull-forward effects and higher interest rates as possible reasons for the decline in sales this year.

READ ALSO: German consumer confidence to worsen in September

The BDH is “cautiously optimistic that the second half of the year will be better than the first,” a spokesperson told DPA. Nevertheless, the association expects a maximum of 200,000 heat pumps to be sold in Germany by the end of the year.

The German government had set a goal of installing 500,000 heat pumps every year from 2024.

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CLIMATE CRISIS

Germany’s parks plant a way forward on climate change

In the castle gardens of Muskauer Park, which straddles both banks of the German-Polish river border, caretakers have mounted a fightback against the impacts of climate change.

Published: 14 September 2024 16:09 CEST
Germany's parks plant a way forward on climate change

On the stump of a 150-year-old oak tree, gnawed by parasites and felled in a storm, a tender new shoot represents the estate’s hope of adapting to rising temperatures and more frequent droughts.

As part of a “natural regeneration” project, the sapling was grafted onto its fallen predecessor by gardeners in the first step towards replacing the UNESCO-listed park’s lost trees.

The young oak “will benefit from the roots of the old tree and will be more resistant to threats”, gardener Jana Kretschmer told AFP.

By transmitting their DNA to the new saplings, the older trees “teach” their descendants how to adapt to less hospitable conditions.

“Nature shows the way, humans need only look on,” said Kretschmer.

Drought and pests are among the silent killers encouraged by climate change, which weakens plants and has started to decimate the flora of the parklands on both sides of the Neisse river.

Some 180 beeches, ashes and oaks had to be felled there last year.

“Every year since 2018 we have to cut down more and more trees,” said Kretschmer, the site’s deputy manager, who bemoaned the loss of countless old trees as a “catastrophe”.

Natural cure

In June, 15 German estates presented their plans to protect their gardens against the impacts of climate change.

At Muskauer Park, the groundskeepers are betting on the traditional method of natural regeneration to increase the tree-count.

Importing more resistant species of trees would be an option, but one that would be “neither sustainable, nor intelligent”, said park manager Cord Panning.

A natural regeneration approach moreover promises savings in two scarce commodities: money and water.

Following the method, caretakers select the best young specimens to plant them in place of old trees, eschewing genetic engineering or any foreign transplants.

In time, they hope to restore virtually all of the trees in the 19th century garden that have been lost and felled.

Among the pests to have plagued the trees at Muskauer Park are the tinder fungus and the bark beetle.

“Usually, by the time you realise it, it is too late,” said Kretschmer.

Long dry spells between 2018 and 2020 did nothing to help the situation, leaving the trees ever more vulnerable to attack.

Fungal invasion

Further south in Germany, at Nymphenburg Palace in Munich, the spread of the phytophthora fungus and invasive mistletoe species are depriving trees of water.

“The trees are experiencing dry stress, even in years where rainfall is sufficient,” said Michael Degle, the palace’s landscape architect.

The Munich park has had a system of “sustainable tree management” since 2018, which employs moisture sensors and new pruning techniques.

The project feeds into the joint efforts of over a dozen garden estates in Germany, including Muskauer Park, to develop effective responses to climate change.

But their work is “reaching its limits”, according to the group’s June report.

Already, 20 to 30 percent of their budget is spent on fixing climate damage — a share which is only increasing.

According to their calculations, somewhere between 200 and 250 million euros ($220 and 275 million) would be needed in the long term to protect historic parks from rising temperatures.

The damage to trees at Muskauer Park by a warming climate will be on show at the estate’s open day at the end of September.

An opportunity, according to Kretschmer, to show that trees “are not just wood, but living beings much more clever than us”.

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