The oil for heating has been phased out in favour of gas because of emissions. So for most homes this would mean to convert back to bulky oil tanks. It's probab

The oil for heating has been phased out in favour of gas because of emissions. So for most homes this would mean to convert back to bulky oil tanks. It's probably cheaper than heat pumps and you can keep the plumbing. The plumbing and use of radiators is a big problem for heat pumps because of the higher temperatures that are needed to heat radiators on the 4th floor etc. Other houses never had oil. They switched from coal straight to gas in the 60s and 70s. But here the furnace is usually on the same floor as the radiators. But conversion is still expensive. > Germany obviously has options but why is it taboo to ask them to change their policies abruptly and temporarily? It's not taboo to ask to change policies. Actually a lot of policies are changing. Even support for nuclear is on the rise. But one of these changes in policies might have to be abandoning some goals of emission reduction. One of the reasons why gas was on the move up is because it burns much cleaner than oil or coal. So converting all that oil heating to gas was incentivised by the government. Also gas is much better in filling in the gaps for renewables than nuclear or coal which can't be switchted off again so easily. The plan was to move from coal to renewables. The path there was via gas. A very reasonable bridge technology. Putin's war came too early for that conversion but luckily not too late to stop switching coal to gas. BTW, Germany never had enough nuclear plants to provide more than about a quarter of today's electric demand anyway. Most was coal. Even if Germany never decided to phase out nuclear, the problems would pretty much have the same magnitude.