Since the unification of the divided city, residential and commercial buildings – particularly in the east – have been subject to constant change through new construction measures, renovations and shutdowns. This has entailed dramatic changes in heat supply structures all over the city. Since around 2000, both the construction of new buildings and renovations on existing buildings have decreased again to a lower, more stable level. In 2005 the construction of new buildings reached the secondary lowermost and the renovations on existing buildings the lowermost number ever.
The base data for the maps presented in this Environmental Atlas was gathered from the data provided by the Emissionskataster Hausbrand (Emissions Database for Domestic Heating) of the Senatsverwaltung für Gesundheit, Umwelt und Verbraucherschutz (Senate Department of Health, Environment and Consumer Protection). This publication also describes in greater detail the surveying objectives and procedures. All data was collected in 2005, updating the previous database state of 1994 and 2000.
Data was collected by building. For each building, there are entries for address, number of apartments, floor areas of heated spaces, types of heating, and fuel consumption for each heating type. Addresses and heating types were updated to the year 2005 by using in some degree current customer records held by Berlin’s electricity, gas and district heat providers, and also the city’s chimney sweep guild.
Despite the breadth of the researched base data, it was not possible to obtain complete figures in all cases, particularly commercial/industrial sites and buildings heated from local heating power plants. Self-contained sites with small floor areas, such as forest outposts, churches or excursion restaurants, were likewise not covered in full.