Compared to other heating markets the wood pellets market is quite young and small in Germany. Nevertheless it is a very fast growing market. For this reason the Straubing Center of Science analyses the behaviour of the wood pellets industry and of the wood pellets consumer. The following results are from the project "Perspectives of important actors in the market of wood pellets" implemented by the Straubing Center of Science. A comprehensive consumer survey has been carried out within the scope of this project. Therefore people in different parts of Germany have been asked about their heating system. The focus was on users of pellets heating systems. To enable a comparison with the users of other heating systems three other groups have been surveyed: people currently building a house, people who have to modernise their heating system soon and people who have just installed a new heating system which is not a pellets system. The main target of the project was to investigate the motivation of consumers whether to buy or not to buy a pellets heating system. In this article some of the results of this empirical study are presented.