GermanyCountry InformationWith ca. 82 million inhabitants, Germany is the biggest national economy within the EU.
Germany’s target is a 40 % reduction of greenhouse gas emissions until 2020 compared with 1990 levels. It is planned to achieve this target by, amongst other things, doubling the energy productivity in the same period of time.
Export of green technologies and services is an important growth field of employment in Germany. Round about 1.8 million people in Germany are employed in field directly connected to environmental protection. In 2006 the country’s green industry produced and exported green products amounting for € 56 billion.
The energy dependence of Germany in 2006 was about 61.3%. Due to that fact, efforts towards energy efficiency always have to be seen against the background of a growing dependence on energy imports and the aim to gain energy supply security.
There is an enormous potential for retrofitting and renovation over the next 20 years due to a significant stock of privately owned residential houses. Estimates assume that €450 billion will have to be necessarily invested to achieve 25% energy savings. Using highly innovative technologies, there is the potential for energy savings up to 85% that can be obtained in the residential housing market over the next 20 years.
Impact and market potential50% of German capital stock consist of residential building (€ 3.5 trillion), another € 2.3 trillion is tied in non-residential buildings. Within the 10-15 year major parts of the overall Germany capital stock will have to be modernised and rebuild due to decreasing net investment during the past 20 years. These figures indicate high investment demands as well as very high market potential for sustainable construction in Germany.
Over a period of four years (2008-2012) Germany puts in place a major retrofit programme for its federal buildings, spending € 120 million per year. The target of the overall promotion of the German CO2 Building Retrofit Programme is doubling its rate of thermal retrofitting of buildings from 1.3 to 2.6% per year by 2016. Additionally, as an piloting project an energy performance contracting project is invented for the public sector. This takes place in the context of the strong emphasis the German governments puts on the promotion of performance contracting in order to boost energy efficiency.
The construction industry in general is labour-intensive whereas the import of natural, fossil fuel usually requires only few people working for it. Therefore, the promotion of sustainable construction measures will have significantly positive effects on employment. In 2007, 1.87 million people worked in the construction industry. A major part of the above mentioned 500.000 additional jobs that will be created by energy efficiency improvement will be located in the construction industry.
Considerable expansion of passive or low energy buildings is being promoted in the private
sector as well as on the federal, regional and local government level. As buildings account for 40% of total final energy use in Germany, effective promotion of passive standard buildings could produce very high energy savings in this largest end-use sector.
Market Study Austria (242 kb,PDF)
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