Climate neutrality not before 2075+?
Requirements for a climate-neutral building stock and scenarios for achieving the target
Content of the study
The European Union has set itself the goal of achieving climate neutrality by 2050. Germany wants to achieve this goal by 2045 and is pursuing numerous approaches to reduce CO2 emissions. The building sector, which causes considerable emissions throughout its entire life cycle, is a key lever in this endeavour. Above all, the reduction of utilisation emissions, primarily driven by space heating, plays a key role here.
If you want to reduce CO2 emissions in this segment, there are two options: One option is to manage a building with purely renewable energies. The second is to increase the efficiency of the building and thus minimise energy loss. The biggest levers here are the heating, roof, façade and windows. Germany is pursuing both approaches, which is why the goal of climate neutrality cannot be realised without comprehensive renovation. Our analyses show that we have to expect investments of at least 1,200 billion euros for this, which are not and will not be the key success factor under the current framework conditions.
The real bottleneck lies in the limited supply capacity. There is simply a lack of craftsmen to carry out the renovation work in full. The capacity bottlenecks in the skilled trades are therefore jeopardising Germany's entire climate strategy.
The solution cannot be "more staff", but it is all the more challenging: productivity in the construction sector must be drastically increased. The key to this is above all the expansion of prefabrication and the creation of new business models. Prefabricated modules and efficient end-to-end processes can increase the number of projects completed per craftsman and speed up the renovation process.
In our study, we shed light on the need for renovation and the associated costs and then look at the achievability of the targets set. Unfortunately, the results are sobering. In all likelihood, we will not be able to achieve climate neutrality in all trades by 2045 - even under improved conditions. Nevertheless, we believe it is worth pulling out all the stops to get as close as possible to the target, and we need to take action now.
