ᐅ KfW financing – is it necessary or not?

saralina87 schrieb:

On one hand, the sun does shine even in winter, and on the other, it’s a simplistic calculation. Compared to a gas furnace, green electricity from the grid is still more environmentally friendly. Especially with proper insulation.

I believe you can’t judge it based on isolated figures. Many people drive fuel-efficient cars but cover completely unnecessary distances or have the most complicated heating systems, while wasting enormous amounts of resources through their daily habits or installing environmentally questionable things elsewhere in the house.

Heating thoughtfully and using water and electricity responsibly contributes much more to ecology than trying to squeeze out the last calculable percent, which I then often waste again in day-to-day life by adjusting the thermostat.

I have met people around the world who bury their waste behind the house or even throw it into the water. Yet, compared to us here, they live far more sustainably because they simply don’t have access to all that stuff.

Therefore, I believe that one should consider the entire package for oneself.

saralina87 schrieb:

But you can also try to challenge the dominance of eco-houses by force.
Of course – it still depends on the overall package.

I don’t want to do that at all.
I just want to point out that not everything labeled as "this makes my house an eco-house" actually results in a more environmentally friendly home. Many things sound good in the brochure, but when you consider everything together, it may in fact be more harmful or resource-intensive than a conventional solution.
On the contrary, I often find that homeowners building an "eco-house" tend to be quite evangelical about it, without fully accounting for all the components.

pagoni2020 schrieb:

I believe you can’t judge it by individual factors alone. Many people drive fuel-efficient cars but then unnecessarily cover excessive kilometers or have the most unusual heating systems while wasting a lot of resources through their daily behavior, or they install ecologically pointless elements elsewhere in the house.
Heating carefully and conserving water and electricity benefits ecology far more than chasing the last, calculated percentage somewhere—which I then often undo in daily life by adjusting the thermostat.
I have met people around the world who bury their waste behind their houses or dump it into water. Yet they live far more ecologically compared to us because they simply don’t have access to all that stuff.
Therefore, I believe one should consider the whole package for themselves.

And still, compared to a heat pump, a gas heating system is not more ecological.
I honestly don’t care how others build their houses; I have no claim to the ultimate, morally right answer to climate change—and I mean that sincerely. What I do find a bit hypocritical is pretending that eco-houses, heat pumps, and alternatives are no better than, for example, gas heating because people also drive cars. That doesn’t make sense. Either you want to build ecologically or you don’t.

saralina87 schrieb:

Compared to a gas heating system, green electricity from the grid is still more environmentally friendly. Especially with proper insulation.

No.
Assuming you build your house with a heat pump and use 100% renewable electricity.

Since only a limited amount of this electricity is available, additional power must be generated using coal or gas to balance your consumption.

This can mean that it would be more environmentally beneficial to produce a small amount of CO2 with an efficient condensing boiler than to generate electricity with a coal power plant, which produces “a lot” of CO2.

Ybias78 schrieb:

advised me not to build a KfW house.

That’s a typical “bar talk” kind of discussion, just about construction. Ask three people and you’ll get four opinions.

Ybias78 schrieb:

a) you need a construction supervisor (who is also specialized in that area)

So what? First of all, it depends on how you build. Through an architect? Then they might be qualified enough themselves or can arrange this at a reasonable cost. Or if you build a standard house through a general contractor, that’s already factored into the price. And even if you want to find and hire an advisor yourself, you can choose a cheap or expensive one.

Ybias78 schrieb:

b) if you insulate the house well, etc., the running costs are low.

That’s a meaningless statement. When the sun goes down, it gets dark...

As I said, it’s also about preserving subsidies, and the advisor will tell you which measures make sense and which don’t.

Ybias78 schrieb:

Furthermore, he recommended using a gas boiler + solar including battery instead of an air-to-water heat pump + solar including battery.

Nonsense.
Batteries don’t pay off financially. My recommendation: leave them out.
Whether gas or air-to-water heat pump is, in my opinion, not that important. From a subsidy perspective, air-to-water heat pumps are favorable and, combined with underfloor heating, a great solution. On the other hand, I consider gas very mature and technically affordable. With the new pipelines, gas prices will stay low.

T_im_Norden schrieb:

Since only a limited amount of this electricity is available, coal or gas must be used to generate power to balance your consumption.

This can lead to situations where it would be environmentally better to produce a small amount of CO2 with an efficient condensing boiler rather than generate electricity from coal with “a lot” of CO2 in a power plant.

If you extend the assessment all the way to electricity generation, you should also consider the financial flows. When you sign a power supply contract with a pure green energy provider, they in turn invest the money exclusively in renewable energy generation. This results in the expansion of these energy sources, making the overall electricity mix more sustainable.