Germany’s two most influential business associations, BDEW and BDI, have launched a last-minute push in support of the EU buildings directive, in a bid to persuade lawmakers to adopt an ambitious stance on housing renovation.
The revision of the EU’s Energy Performance of Buildings Directive – the legal framework to boost renovation on the path towards a climate-neutral building sector – is heading closer to the finish line, with decisive talks scheduled for 12 October.
But just as Germany, Italy, and other EU countries are pushing to water down the directive, German industry associations have come out in favour of maintaining a high level of ambition.
“Together with their member companies, BDEW and BDI support the goal of a climate-neutral building stock in Europe,” says a letter co-authored by the two heavyweight German industry associations.
In their letter, the two business groups urge German centre-right lawmakers in the European Parliament, Angelika Niebler and Christian Ehler, to support mandatory renovations for the worst-performing buildings.
The German government had initially signalled its support for the European Commission’s flagship proposal, tabled in December 2021, to renovate the 15% worst-performing buildings in each EU country.
But the social democrats and liberal FDP party quickly withdrew their support for the law’s central instrument – minimum energy performance standards (MEPS) – amid a drawn-out fight in Berlin over the proposed fossil heater ban.
Buildings Minister Klara Geywitz, a social democrat (SPD), called the obligation to renovate worst-performing buildings “unconstitutional”, saying rural communities would be devastated by the measure.
“With these minimum standards, we produce thousands of [countryside] properties that cannot be renovated because they have no economic purpose, but then have to be renovated with taxpayers’ money,” the minister said in Berlin on 26 September. Her mother, whom she often refers to, lives in a rural area.
German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, who is also from the SPD, has embraced that stance, with a joint government declaration from 25 September saying explicitly that Berlin “wants to exclude mandatory refurbishments of individual residential buildings” from the directive.
However, the government’s dismissive approach is not backed by industry.
“The Commission’s proposal to first introduce minimum standards for the buildings with the worst energy performance is logical and is supported,” reads the letter signed by BDI deputy CEO Holger Lösch and BDEW board member Kirsten Westphal.
Buildings Minister Geywitz, who is accustomed to industry pressure, sees the industry’s support for the buildings directive as motivated by self-interest.
“If the law prescribes a minimum standard for buildings, then all of a sudden I have tens of thousands of houses that have to be refurbished in one day. And that creates demand,” she said.
The BDI retorted that it is merely aligning with the country’s climate targets. In Germany alone, emissions from the buildings sector are expected to sit above a cumulative 40 million tonnes of CO2 by 2030.
“Minimum energy performance requirements for the worst performing buildings must be part of the EPBD amendment so that the building sector – like the other sectors – can become climate neutral by 2045,” Lösch argues.
Decisive talks
Negotiators from the European Parliament and the EU Council of Ministers, representing the 27 EU member states, are due to meet for decisive talks on the buildings directive on 12 October.
After two years of negotiation, some fear that Parliament lawmakers will give up the fight and aim to finish the process before the European elections in June.
But the industry associations argue that more is less. While the buildings directive ought to ensure that buildings are renovated, it also creates the EU’s future building standard: zero-emission buildings, or ZEBs in short.
The standards for these should be designed “in a practical way,” the letter insists.
While the coveted ZEB label is tied to energy consumption per square meter, the two industry associations argue that it should be easier to attain.
To that end, houses connected to “efficient” district heating and cooling grids – as defined by the EU’s energy efficiency directive – should de facto be regarded as ZEBs, they argue.
[Edited by Frédéric Simon/Zoran Radosavljevic]
