So, the minister wants more heat pumps for climate protection.
In new builds, these electric heaters are standard, because good insulation means that not much heat is needed there, and if you want to assume for a moment that they are all operated with green electricity, then they are actually really clean.
The old building is still struggling to be retrofitted, although subsidies are available that make very expensive systems expensive, and there are now examples that reach flow temperatures of 75 degrees Celsius, so that underfloor heating is no longer an absolute requirement for operating the pump.
The reason for the reluctance is simple: Homeowners can count. If the oil heating consumes 3000 liters a year, with a small part of the heat escaping through the chimney, this could be replaced by almost 28,000 kilowatt hours of electricity for electric fan heaters, radiators and boilers. Under optimal conditions, a good heat pump produces 4 kWh of heat from 1 kWh of electrical energy, so there would be 7000 kWh more per year on the meter, at 0.30 euros per kWh that costs 2100 euros. But it gets even worse, because the colder it is outside and the higher the flow temperature required, the less efficiently the pump works because it has more trouble turning cold ambient air into hot water.
If the radiators are not to remain lukewarm, the ratio over the year is closer to three than four, meaning that even more electricity must be used.
For it to pay off, oil and gas would have to become much more expensive than they already are, which would be political suicide.
Or electricity will be much cheaper.
We can wait a long time.