Most cities, even more pronounced in Western Germany, have lackluster district heating networks — meaning green district heating concepts like in Denmark wouldn’t work nearly as well.
There was a huge privatization wave in the 90s. Residential buildings in many cases now need to make a profit every year. High-capex measures that bring mediocre/hard-to-forecast opex improvements (entirely dependent on the price of fossil gas vs. electricity) like heat pumps are not going to win you fans among profit-driven investors.
There are compounding issues too:
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