Electricity from oil, gas and coal-fired power stations is the most damaging to the climate, because only about 33 % of the oil, gas- and coal energy arrives to you as heating energy. The other 66 % normally damages the environment as unused heat. It is a similar picture with electric from nuclear power stations. Although they do not produce damaging CO2, they carry other incalculable and long lasting dangers for humanity.
Natural electricity from water, wind and solar is clean electricity without considerable climate damage. But all electricity is much too expensive and valuable to waste it. This applies also for electrically driven earth and earth and geothermal using water pumps. They produce about 30-40 % of their heat with extra expenditure for machines using electricity.
To calculate the environmental damage from the use of heating energy in houses and to be able to compare, you compute the primary energy requirement per m² and year in kWh/m²a. The primary energy requirement, has with the heating energy requirement, that the same dimensions kWh/m²a has, only a limited amount to do. Because only the primary energy requirement tells us, how environmentally damaging or friendly with regard to CO2- the climate damage is for the heating energy in the house.
The environmental impact is the highest, if heating appliances use electricity.
It is the lowest using renewables such as wood and solar.
Because this is so, the state guarantees cheap credit for house building via the KfW-Bank by means of the CO2- minimising programme and tax credits. These are all the more favourable, the lower the specific primary energy requirement for the heating and hot water in a house is.
The highest state subsidies for houses if they have a specific primary energy requirement under 40 kWh / m² a.
Bio- Solar- Houses have the economically lowest primary energy requirement of under 20Wh / m² a.