There is no getting around the heat pump for the Greens. A black model, which according to the manufacturer is “extremely quiet”, “energy-saving”, “space-saving” and “good for the future”, stands at the entrance to the conference room in the Heinrich Böll Foundation. If the Greens have their way, climate-friendly heat pumps like these will soon provide heat in millions of houses. But for that, the party must first get the controversial Building Energy Act (GEG) through parliament.
For weeks there has been a bitter dispute about the planned ban on installing oil and gas heating systems, which Economics Minister Robert Habeck (Greens) and Building Minister Klara Geywitz (SPD) have introduced. Not only the FDP is up in arms, the bill is also extremely unpopular in polls. The approval ratings of the Greens have been falling for weeks. In Bremen, where state elections are due in a week, the party is threatened with a smack.
So it looks like an attempt at a liberation, which the Greens are attempting on Friday at a heat transition conference in the Böll Foundation, which is close to the party. “Affordable, independent and climate-friendly”, it should be, according to the title of the event, and the Greens are now also relying on this order in terms of content. In a two-page paper, the parliamentary group proposes making serious improvements to their minister’s law.
Specifically, it is about the social cushioning of the law. According to the Green Group, low earners with a taxed annual income of less than 20,000 euros should be subsidized by up to 80 percent of the costs of replacing the heating system. “The subsidy rate then decreases in stages as income increases. People with a taxable household income of up to 60,000 euros receive a subsidy of 40 percent of the total costs,” the paper says. Apparently, a lot of money is supposed to bring back trust.
Nobody wants to rip working heaters out of the basement and nobody wants to break into basements.
Economics Minister Robert Habeck defend his law.
Because the Greens are sticking to the fact that heating systems are urgently becoming more climate-friendly. “We are at least ten years too late with this law,” says parliamentary group leader Katharina Dröge in the Böll Foundation. It was a “political failure” that the heat transition had not been tackled earlier.
The draft law from Habeck was good, says Dröge. The basic subsidy of 30 percent should be retained for everyone, and the Greens also want to stick to the climate bonuses as a reward for timely heating changes. “But we would like to give significantly more for people with low incomes,” she says.
Neither Dröge nor the parliamentary group’s paper say what it all costs and how the Greens want to finance it. This is exactly what bothers the liberal coalition partner. “Of course we will support low-income households. But what the Greens parliamentary group is proposing here cannot, in my view, be implemented,” Christian Dürr, leader of the FDP parliamentary group, told the Tagesspiegel. “On the one hand it is completely unclear how this is to be financed, on the other hand the staggering of the funding is extremely bureaucratic,” said Dürr. He fears that an authority would first have to be established for an individual examination.
The Economics Minister himself does not respond to the demands of his party in the Böll Foundation. As in the past few days, he walks past the press representatives without comment – probably also out of concern about questions about his State Secretary Patrick Graichen, who sees himself exposed to accusations of nepotism.
But Habeck defends the GEG. “Nobody wants to rip working heaters out of a basement, and nobody wants to break into basements,” he clarifies. However, it cannot be the case that the Greens and the Economics Ministry alone are responsible for climate protection. “It’s not just the Ministry of Labor that is responsible for a just society,” says Habeck.
But you have to catch up in a short time what other countries like Norway have been doing for a long time. There, 60 percent of households are heated with heat pumps. Of course, district heating or biomass could also help, but he was skeptical about hydrogen. But Habeck also complains about backward-looking forces: “The adherence to fossil technologies seems to be more anchored in this country than elsewhere.” The heat pump in front of the conference room probably needs some convincing.
