Solar panels provide energy for heat in Germany’s harsh winters (Photo: Flickr)

Under Germany’s new Renewable Energies Heating Law, all new homes built, beginning January 1, 2009, will be required to install renewable energy heating systems. Experts say that updating energy performance in buildings could save an estimated 50 billion euros ($73.9 billion US) in heating costs in Germany up to 2020 alone.

The German government is also launching a program to improve insulation in the country’s housing stock and to reduce energy waste. Existing houses will have to be remodeled to use renewable energy-based heating systems from 2010 on. For old houses, 10% of the heating and domestic hot water energy needs will have to be provided by renewables.

The new measures help Germany keep pace with Spain, which required builders to add solar to residential and commercial buildings beginning in March of last year (Power Plug, 4/26/07), and leap past us here in California, where the Public Utilities Commission wants homes to be zero net energy, but not until 2020 (e-Newswire, 10/03/07), and large housing developments aren’t required to add solar until 2011.

Germany is allocating 350 million euros ($517 million US) each year in grants for homeowners to install renewable energy systems such as solar panels, wood pellet stoves, and boilers and heat pumps. Homeowners will have to use renewable energy sources to meet 14% of a household’s total energy consumption for heating and domestic hot water. Fines of up to 500,000 euros ($739,000 US) will face anyone who fails to upgrade their heating systems.

According to the German government, homes built in the 1960s use on average four times more energy for heating than updated, energy-efficient houses. Meanwhile, oil prices in Germany have tripled since 2001. This new renewable energy heating law is part of a comprehensive package of measures that aims to reduce Germany’s carbon emissions by 40% by 2020 compared to 1990 levels.