SPD minister admits: Habeck's heating law must go - "A death blow for an entire industry"

Merkur SPD minister admits: Habeck's heating law must go - "A death blow for an entire industry" Amy Walker • 15 hours • 3 minutes reading time "Make it much, much easier" For months, the traffic light coalition has been arguing in public about the heating law. It has now been in force for more than a year - only to be overturned again soon? Berlin - Before the new elections in February 2025, the election campaign machinery is being ramped up. For the Greens, this inevitably means a renewed debate about the so-called heating law penned by Economics Minister Robert Habeck (Greens), which was passed in September 2023 after long public discussions. The law, which was supposed to switch Germans to climate-neutral heat supply, has now been in place for a year. After the federal election, however, the law could be repealed again. SPD minister speaks out against heating law: "Fundamentally reform" Construction Minister Klara Geywitz (SPD) has now voiced clear criticism of the heating law of the collapsed traffic light government. "In my view, we must fundamentally reform this building energy law and make it much, much simpler," said the SPD politician on Tuesday (November 19) at the Housing Industry Day in Berlin. It is too complex, has too many individual regulations. It would be better to take a step back and limit ourselves to the goal of saving climate-damaging CO₂ in the building sector. However, the state does not have to regulate the concrete implementation in detail. Only a CO₂ budget could be set for the construction phase and another later for the operating phase. Geywitz admitted that she had fewer problems with the then FDP-led Ministry of Finance on the issue than with the Green-led Ministry of Economic Affairs. Given the large housing shortage in metropolises, housing policy is likely to be one of the most important issues before the federal election on February 23. The traffic light coalition has clearly missed its target of building 400,000 new homes per year. CDU and CSU want to abolish heating law: industry sounds the alarm The CDU and CSU union also clearly spoke out in favor of ending the heating law during the election campaign. "We will withdraw the heating law," said CDU vice-chairman Jens Spahn recently in the FAZ podcast. "We are ending Habeck's subsidy programs." These statements, backed up by those of SPD minister Geywitz, are causing uproar, especially in the energy and heat pump industry. "Unfortunately, it remains completely unclear what the Union specifically wants to abolish and what the alternatives should be," said Bastian Gierull, CEO of Octopus Energy Germany GmbH to IPPEN.MEDIA. The consequences of abolishing it would be a "devastating situation for an entire industry," as billions in investments would be at stake. "If politicians overturn the heating law now, we risk consumers continuing to invest in outdated oil and gas heating systems. That would mean enormous follow-up costs for people, which they would have to shoulder later," the CEO continued. The debate is also being fueled by the fact that several cities and municipalities in Germany are not planning on having a gas supply in the future. The Mannheim municipal utilities want to shut down the gas network by 2035, and other municipalities are doing something similar. The Greens see these plans as confirmation that the heating law was the right decision after all. "Despite all the criticism, the GEG was right," the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung quoted the Greens' economic policy spokeswoman, Sandra Detzer, as saying at a recent Green Party conference in Wiesbaden. Anyone who recently installed a new gas heating system will now feel the consequences "with all the consequences," said Detzer. SPD wants to make housing construction easier and cheaper: construction industry calls for more political action Geywitz justified her new opinion by saying that building in Germany is already associated with too many regulations and therefore too high costs. Building in Germany must become cheaper and easier. Hopefully the planned amendment to the Building Code will find a majority in the Bundestag in the next few weeks, Geywitz continued. On Monday, the Federal Statistical Office announced that the number of building permits fell by almost a quarter in September. A total of 157,200 apartments were approved from January to September, 19.7 percent less than a year earlier. High financing and material costs have been a problem for the industry for some time.