Heating exchange: The FDP relies on hydrogen – why that is a mistake

Good morning, dear reader,

it may sound absurd to you, but when I see smoking chimneys, I get a feeling of home. I grew up just a few hundred yards from a power plant, three smoking cooling towers were the backdrop to my childhood. Whenever I saw them looming on the horizon, I knew: I’ll be home soon.

Maybe some people who live in the north of Duisburg feel the same way. there it says the largest steelworks in Europewho have favourited Schwelgern Hütte by ThyssenKrupp Steel. It stretches more than 100 meters “Black Giant” in the sky above the district of Bruckhausen. To this day it is one of the largest blast furnaces in the world – but: a discontinued model.

Because the group is converting. Four blast furnaces are to be replaced by so-called direct reduction plants during ongoing operation. Instead of coal and coke, Thyssenkrupp wants to make it by 2045 Green hydrogen steel win. This should reduce CO2 emissions to almost zero. How this monstrous task could succeed, can be explained to the Federal President today. Frank Walter Steinmeier visits the plant in Duisburg and should hear one thing above all there: that everything depends on getting the hydrogen.

Until it is ready, Thyssenkrupp can temporarily take over the new plants natural gas operate. A model that should look familiar to you, dear readers. Because it should not only be used in industry, but also in the cellars of Germans. At least that’s what the FDP hopes and therefore has Exemption rules for hydrogen ins Heating Act written. The party likes to call it openness to technology, you know. It is extremely uncertain whether this energy source will even be available for every private household.

The Federal Government’s expert council for climate issues, for example, doubts that. Instead of burning up the rare and expensive hydrogen in buildings, preference should be given to industrial companies – just like Thyssenkrupp Steel. Also Consumer advocates warn before installing so-called H2-ready heaters. Because: If the hydrogen network does not soon reach residential areas, consumers will continue to depend on natural gas. And that gets really expensive. Not only because of the rising CO2 tax, but also because the grid fees are being passed on to fewer and fewer customers. Because anyone who has a heat pump installed today no longer pays for the gas connection.

And there is another problem with the bet on hydrogen: It means that the climate protection that is already necessary today is being postponed. Even if hydrogen were to flow to private households at some point, the building sector would have used up the CO2 budget unnecessarily by then. This is all the more true since the German Association for Gas and Water (DVGW) assumes that it will take longer to convert the pipelines than the draft law envisages. “Until the forties” it will take time, said DVGW CEO Gerald Linke recently “HE DOES”. So another 20 years.

It would be negligent to wait that long. Instead, the traffic light coalition should ensure that gas heaters are only installed in exceptional cases. This requires the right incentives – above all one better socially graded support. After all, the installation of a heat pump often costs four times as much as that of a gas heating system.

It will be expensive for the state, no question. And yes, the thrifty FDP Finance Minister Christian Lindner should gnash his teeth. But he should consider whether the money isn’t a much better investment than in rescuing the gas network operators. After all, converting the lines to hydrogen is estimated to cost around seven billion euros, so it’s not a bargain either. And possibly a real non-starter. When the raw material doesn’t flow at all in the end.

If a person is particularly good at one thing, then putting things off for as long as possible. And so there should be a particularly large number in Bavaria’s tax offices today property tax returns arrive.

Unlike in the other federal states, owners there had three months longer to pass on the data for the property tax reform. This had become necessary because the Federal Constitutional Court had declared the previous calculation of the tax on the ownership of land and buildings to be unconstitutional. But even Bavaria going it alone will eventually come to an end. But that doesn’t mean that the chaos will end with the last property tax deadline today.

Because after the property tax return is before the property tax assessments. And against them are already nationwide Hundreds of thousands of appeals received. Many more are still pending because the tax offices have difficulty keeping up with the notices. The appeals themselves are currently hardly processed. At the same time, the Association of Taxpayers (BdSt) is striving for a constitutional action against the federal model. This applies to all states except Bavaria, Baden-Württemberg, Hamburg, Hesse and Lower Saxony. In Baden-Württemberg, the BdSt is already taking action against the property tax law there, as it also considers this to be unconstitutional.