Techem Atlas for Energy, Heat & Water 2023: Germans are using less energy for heating than ever before

Eschborn, October 10, 2024: Increased energy prices and politicians’ calls to save energy led to a significant reduction in energy consumption in residential buildings in 2023. Despite this fact, greenhouse gas emissions per dwelling remain largely unchanged, which means that the building sector is still clearly failing to meet climate targets. This is one of the findings of the latest Techem Atlas for Energy, Heat & Water 2023, which is based on the evaluation and analysis of consumption data from 2023 on consumption and costs for heating and hot water from 1.2 million German apartments in around 110,000 apartment buildings. The Atlas provides insights into the current state of energy supply and reveals potential for increasing efficiency and avoiding emissions in German residential buildings.

The most important results at a glance:

• Fossil fuels are very dominant when it comes to heat generation. Around 90 percent of the multi-family housing stock still uses fossil fuels to generate heat for room heating and hot water. The most frequently used energy source is still natural gas, which is used to heat around 52% of the area. While the share of heating oil as an energy source has fallen from 16% to around 9% since 2013, district heating is becoming increasingly popular with a recent share of 38%.
• Record final energy prices continue to place a heavy burden on users. The final energy prices reflected in heating bills rose by an average of 70% in the period from 2021 to 2023. Although consumption costs rose less sharply (plus 32%) due to the pronounced savings behavior of users and favorable weather conditions, both costs and energy prices per unit of use have reached the highest level since our evaluations began.
• Final energy consumption, adjusted for weather conditions, fell significantly by around 9% in 2023 compared to 2021 thanks to the savings efforts of many users. Electricity consumption for heat pumps fell particularly sharply with regard to room heating – nearly 14% was saved here.
• There are clear regional differences in final energy consumption for room heating as a result of the different energy status of buildings, systems and user behavior. This is illustrated by the map of Germany with weather-adjusted room heating consumption by zip code area. (see appendix story chart “Decarbonization in the multi-family housing stock”) 
• Greenhouse gas emissions in homes remain at a high level despite falling energy consumption. In 2023, users of an apartment in an apartment building emitted a total of 1.92 tons of CO₂ equivalents on average just from space heating (1.55 t) and domestic hot water heating (0.37 t). This roughly corresponds to the level of the previous year 2022. In combination with the emissions from household-related electricity consumption, which averaged 1.1 metric tons, the emissions from a single apartment in 2023 totaled three metric tons of greenhouse gases.
• The German government has declared its intention to achieve climate neutrality by 2045. This can be achieved in multi-family housing by combining various measures, such as optimizing the operation of heating systems, converting to hybrid systems or decarbonizing central power generation . 

Image information: The Techem Atlas for Energy, Heating & Water 2023 provides insights into the current state of energy supply and reveals the potential for increasing efficiency and avoiding emissions in German residential buildings (Copyright: Techem).

“The energy supply in Germany is being placed on a completely new, future-oriented footing – for a strong, secure and sustainable future. With our Techem Atlas for energy, heat and water, we are making a key contribution here. To do this, we evaluated data from around 110,000 buildings with 1.2 million apartments in the German multi-family housing stock – with the result that the energy consumption level of the existing stock is a good basis for making the decarbonization of the German building stock Low-investment, AI-based solutions, such as continuous heating monitoring and the optimization of existing heating systems based on this, play a central role here. These can achieve significant efficiency gains and a reduction of 10-15 percent, and as much as 27 percent for heat pump systems,” comments Matthias Hartmann, CEO of Techem, on the results. 

Dr. Arne Kähler, Head of Techem Research Institute on Sustainability (TRIOS), adds: “Essentially, we show in the new Techem Atlas that the decarbonization of the multi-family housing stock can be implemented with purely technical measures. The Techem CO₂ Index, which sets the actual emissions of apartment buildings in relation to the sector targets for 2030, is an important tool that makes the progress in reducing CO₂ visible and shows the need for readjustment. Fortunately, buildings supplied by electrically operated heat pumps are already emitting around 20 percent less₂ than planned for 2030. Buildings supplied by district heating, on the other hand, are exceeding the emission targets by almost 50 percent. Decarbonizing district heating therefore remains an important task for the coming years."

About the Techem Atlas for Energy, Heat & Water

Techem’s Atlas for Energy, Heat & Water documents energy and water consumption, greenhouse gas emissions and the costs of heating and hot water in German homes. The analysis is essentially based on data from the calendar year 2023, which was collected anonymously as part of regular evaluations of consumption bills from 1.2 million apartments in around 130,000 apartment buildings and used to prepare the heating cost bill. Due to the great interest in the study, Techem has been publishing the energy data as a brochure since the 1998/99 heating period. The complete results of the study can be found here (German only). 

About Techem 

Techem is a leading service provider for smart and sustainable buildings. The company's services cover the topics of energy management and resource conservation, healthy living and process efficiency in properties. Founded in 1952, Techem is now active in 18 countries with over 4,000 employees and services more than 13 million dwellings. Techem offers efficiency improvements along the entire value chain of heat and water in real estate and regenerative supply concepts and solutions. As the market leader in remote radio detection of energy consumption in homes, Techem continues to drive networking and digital processes in real estate. Modern multi sensor devices, radio smoke detectors with remote inspection, metering point operation, charging infrastructure for electromobility and services related to improving drinking water quality in properties complement the solution portfolio for the housing as well as the commercial real estate industry. Further information can be found at https://www.techem.com or follow us on LinkedIn.