Increase in private investment in climate action
Replacing oil-fired heating systems with heat pumps or cars with combustion engines with electric ones: millions of German households are investing to help realise the energy transition.
Frankfurt/Main (dpa) – Willingness of private households to invest in climate action is rising in Germany. In the latest edition of its annually published Energy Transition Barometer, the promotional bank KfW found that two thirds (66 percent) of households claim to be willing to take action.
84 percent (83 percent in the previous year) of the households that were interviewed as part of the representative study stated that they believe that it is important or very important to transform the energy system to move away from fossil fuels such as coal, oil and gas and replace these with renewable energy sources such as wind, solar and water power.
Heat pumps, wood pellet heating systems, solar panels, solar thermal energy, electric cars: some 14 million households in Germany are already using at least one of these technologies, that is one in three households (34 percent). Another 5 percent said that they were planning to make this type of investment within the next twelve months.
“The extraordinarily hot summer of 2026 has highlighted the necessity to take climate action,” the head economist at KfW, Dirk Schumacher, says.
Carbon pricing for all fossil fuels such as heating oil, natural gas, petrol and diesel fuel was introduced in Germany in 2021. Using these raw materials has therefore become more expensive, and this is meant to promote climate protection.
