Short term policy strategies and long term targets: The case of the German building sector

The German government set targets for the reduction of heating energy demand in buildings (-20% of space heating energy need 2008-2020) as well as for the share of renewables in the overall heatsector (14% by 2020). In addition, long-term visions up to 2050 exist. The research questions of this paper are: (1) How can different policies affect space heating and hot water energy demand in Germany by 2020? (2) To which extent are these short-term policy interventions consistent with longterm targets? We use Invert/EE-Lab for modelling the German residential and non-residential building sector. The model takes into account barriers and investment decision patterns for the uptake of renovation measures and the investment in different types of heating, hot water and cooling technologies. More than 60 short-term scenarios until 2020 are simulated with different policy design options and energy price levels. They serve as a starting point for simulating a smaller number of scenarios until 2050. The short-term scenarios show that with ambitious policy design final energy demand in the German building sector for heating, hot water and cooling could decrease by about 16% from 2008 until 2020 (i.e. below 680 TWh in 2020 compared to 808 TWh in 2008), GHG emissions could decrease by more than 50% and the renewable share could more than double. Though, this may seem promising, the long-term scenarios indicate that most of the short-term scenarios do not prepare the ground for really ambitious energy efficiency and climate mitigation targets of the building sector in 2050