At one urban municipal utility in a 2025 pilot study for the BDEW and DVGW associations, climate-driven spending made up 19% of investment in plants and networks, a share it expects to reach 29% by 2035. Across the four utilities studied, the climate-driven share of supply investment over the next ten years ranges from about 7% to about 30%.
From four utilities to a national estimate
BDEW applied that range to the roughly EUR 4 billion a year that public water supply now invests. The result is an estimated EUR 3.2 billion to EUR 13.5 billion of climate-driven investment over ten years. The study calls itself a first approximation and recommends a more representative follow-up. A separate study for the municipal utilities association VKU puts the climate share at 10–15% of a EUR 800 billion water and wastewater need over 2025–2044.
What the money buys
The pilot names the drivers: higher peak loads in longer dry spells, deeper pipes and better-insulated storage to keep drinking water cool, flood and raw-water protection, and more storage and transport capacity. The climate behind them is measurable. Germany's mean temperature rose 1.7 °C between 1881 and 2022, and hot days of 30 °C or more rose from about 3 to about 10 a year.
Both ends of the range
The extremes run in both directions. More than 180 people died in the July 2021 floods, which led to a reconstruction fund of up to EUR 30 billion. In 2022 the Rhine reached extreme low water for the third time in 20 years, and low flow, heat and salinity drove a fish kill along about 500 km of the Oder on the German side.
How exposed different regions and assets are, what the National Water Strategy commits to and where adaptation funding is missing are examined in the full brief. The full report, Climate Resilience: Drought and Flood Risk in Germany, is available for USD 249. For a free overview, see Germany Country Snapshot.