Assessing the impact of local energy generation and storage to achieve the decarbonization of the single-family housing stock in Germany

The decarbonization of the building stock, in this paper focusing on the single-family house typology in Germany, is essential to achieve the climate goals. In fact, as the largest part of the building stock, it represents more than 65 % of the entire German residential building stock. Current strategies and regulations have demonstrated low impact on carbon emission reduction due to poor renovation rates, particularly in the single-family house typology. The present study analyzes the potential of carbon emission reduction prioritizing local renewable energy generation and storage in combination with improved building energy systems. Through a simulation-based approach, it considers reference buildings of different age classes and formulates variants for improving strategies with different levels of retrofit, under the premise of a fully renewable, locally generated energy supply. Based on the potential for solar energy supply, the variants consider the seasonal shift that needs to be stored and particularly the role of hydrogen as an energy storage medium. The study goal is quantifying the impacts of the local renewable energy production, and its required storage capacity depending on the retrofit depth, for estimating the potential of transforming the single-family house stock to net zero carbon emissions.