Transforming or tinkering at the margins? Assessing policy strategies for heating decarbonisation in Germany and the United Kingdom

Decarbonising heating supply is an important part of the global energy transition, and a vital step towards mitigating climate change. We analyse the transformative potential of German and UK heating sector decarbonisation policies. We deploy Transformative Environmental Policy [TEP], originally developed to guide policy development, as an analytical framework to discuss how and to what extent both countries’ heating sector policy strategies promote the necessary radical reconfiguration of the socio-technical system of heating supply. TEP suggests a systemic approach for such reconfigurations, addressing technologies, social practices, institutions and infrastructures as well as combining experimental support of innovation with governance approaches for the phase-out of unsustainable technologies and practices. Our comparative analysis of German and UK decarbonisation strategies concludes that such elements can be identified in both strategies, although to different degrees. The analysis points to considerable deficiencies, such as a lack of phase-out policies, insufficient low-carbon building standards and a neglect of non-technical system elements.