Building Minister Klara Geywitz wants to make housing cheaper and is therefore questioning stricter insulation regulations. “In the beginning it makes a lot of sense, because what I insulate I save because of what I don’t have in terms of additional costs,” said the SPD politician on Thursday in Berlin. “But by EH55 at the latest, there are many question marks as to whether the money that is additionally put into insulation is in a sensible relationship to the energy saved.”
Traffic light actually wants to tighten regulations from 2025
EH55 means that a home uses only 55 percent of the energy of a comparable new build. According to the coalition agreement, traffic lights want the even stricter EH40 standard for new buildings from 2025. Geywitz said at the “80 Seconds” conference that the increasingly stringent insulation regulations had made building in Germany very expensive. It is “not an honest system” because the carbon dioxide emissions are not taken into account in the production of the insulating materials.
Geywitz sees other ways to reduce construction costs, including the digitization of building applications, the change in the Regional Planning Act, the thinning out of the DIN standards and serial construction. “We have to build completely differently,” said Geywitz. Other materials are needed, you have to pre-produce and digitize more. This is the only way to achieve a “cost level that can be freely financed and rented”.
For a long time, cost increases were not so significant because of the very low interest rates. Now, on the other hand, the following applies: “The situation we have now is basically not a nice one: we are standing there naked.” The state can no longer afford “simply to subsidize the increase in construction costs”.
