The Example of the Thermal Insulation in Germany

Abstract

Residential energy use is among the main sources for carbon dioxide inGermany. Although it has been subject to environmental regulation, asteady increase is observable. The author poses the question, whetherthe environmental standards in the building sector helped thedevelopment of new materials. The case of the windows and panes industryis analyzed in depth as an example. Field studies as well as econometricmethods lead to the conclusion that environmental regulation lags behindthe technological development.Ecologically beneficial residencies as well as ecologically beneficialtraffic does not exist; both activities of private households are bydefinition disturbances to the ecological system. The construction andmaintenance of buildings come with significant uses of space, naturalresources and large amounts of waste and waste water. The use ofbuildings affects the environment with the emission of carbon dioxidefrom fossil fuel burning - mostly for heating purposes.The demand for energy of private households is a field that still showsa vast potential for energy savings. This is a rather surprising result,since the households' energy demand has been subject to regulation andtaxation for several years. The main determinants of the households'energy demand are controlled by the Ordinance for Heating Systems, whichsets a required minimum efficiency, and the Ordinance for ThermalInsulation. The latter used to solely affect newly constructed houses,but recently (1995) has been extended to maintenance work on existingbuildings.Although parts of the above mentioned potential could be realized byconventional means, one can raise the question, to which extent newproducts and materials are necessary and what fosters the development ofsuch innovations. In the following we choose one specific trajectoryfrom the large choice of possible innovative lines of production in thebuilding sector, and ask how it has been affected by environmentalregulation.Facing the discrepancy between the intensive regulation on the one handand the lack of energy efficiency on the other hand, we therefore ask,whether the policy mix has offered enough incentives for the inventionand diffusion of new solutions and where the obstacles are. This problemis closely related to the question of innovative effects ofenvironmental regulation. In other words, how should environmentalregulation be designed to guarantee optimal benefits to the environmentand incentives for innovation and growth. At this point we may assume,that these incentives will differ for invention and deployment ofinnovations as well as for basic and incremental innovations.This contribution relates to the framework of the FIU project (cf.Lehr/Lobbe in this volume). There, a positive influence of environmentalregulation on innovation has been found in cases where regulation wasdynamically tightened and flexible enough to allow for different newtechnologies. Here, we concentrate on the invention phase. Taking theexample of windows and panes we especially analyze the impact of theOrdinance on Thermal Insulation ({''}Warmeschutzverordnung{''}, WSchVO),We chose this example, becausewindows are a central determinant for the heat loss of a building,windows are used in all buildings in similar ways and thus allow forgeneralized results,panes show long term observable trajectories, which can be described byconsistent parameters, therefore allowing for quantitative analysis andthe WSchVO is tightened regularly and allows for the use of a wide rangeof materials to fulfill the standard (flexibility).This paper is organized as follows. The first section lists the maintechnological development, the deployment potential and the marketsituation. The second section contains a survey of the relevantstandards. The nature of the influence of regulation on thetechnological change is closely analyzed in the third section using aneconometric causality test. The method is briefly presented. The papercloses with a summary and an outlook.