The German parliament adopted on Friday (8 September) a controversial ban on new fossil heaters starting from 2028 at the latest, following months of government infighting and an injunction by the country’s top court.
Germany wants to be climate neutral by 2045 by which time all of the country’s 20 million heaters must run on renewables.
To facilitate the transition, the government wanted to ban new fossil heaters from 2024 – and speed up the country’s decoupling from Russia gas.
“This law is a big law. It will shape German energy and climate policy for the next two decades,” Vice-Chancellor Robert Habeck (Greens) said ahead of its adoption, speaking to Pro7SAT1.
By then, the implications of the law had already blown up in the face of the German coalition government. With the best-selling tabloid BILD bent on stirring up public opposition, the liberal freedom party (FPD) – the junior partner in the three-party coalition – quickly started to demand changes to the law.
Initially, the law would have enacted a clean cut from fossil fuel boilers as of 2024. Only new heaters running on at least 65% renewables were supposed to be allowed, limiting consumer choice to heat pumps, biomass or district heating.
On Friday, parliament passed a deeply altered version of the law. Instead of a clean cut, boiler bans will be tied to municipal heat plans that are due to be adopted by 2028.
As a consequence, the climate impact of the law is strongly diminished. Meanwhile, fossil heaters are experiencing a banger year as anxious consumers race to secure new oil and gas boilers to avoid switching to more expensive heat pumps.
Environmentalists are deeply unhappy, while industry bemoans the uncertainty caused by the row over the law and the subsequent delays.
“The present Building Energy Act [containing the boiler ban] is symptomatic of the climate policy shirking of the traffic light government in Germany and Europe,” said Elisabeth Staudt, a buildings expert at Environmental Action Germany (DUH), an NGO.
Holger Lösch, from industry association BDI, was not too happy either. “The political dispute over the Building Energy Act has created great uncertainty and brought building renovation to a virtual standstill,” he said.
Declarations by conservatives, currently leading the polls, that they would scrap the whole law if they come back in power following the 2025 elections are adding fuel to the fire.
“As soon as we govern again, we will revoke it,” said the CDU’s Jens Spahn, a failed candidate for party leadership currently in charge of energy policy and formerly minister of health.
Before parliament’s summer break, a top court injunction, initiated by Christian Democrat MP Thomas Heilmann, had put a stop to a speedy adoption, adding an extra few months to the process.
Missed climate targets
Germany’s buildings are one of the two reasons why the country is expected to miss its 2030 climate target by a solid 200 million tonnes of CO2 emissions.
In theory, a switch to clean heating systems by households, alongside rising renovation rates, should have been sufficient to meet the 2030 goals.
But because of delays and loopholes, the law is now unlikely to deliver the emissions reductions needed to meet the targets.
“We will achieve three-quarters of the original climate protection targets with this very ambitious law,” Habeck admitted.
According to calculations by the Öko Institute, the law will reduce CO2 emissions by a total of 39.2 million tonnes by 2030. And that’s in the best case scenario: at worst, total emissions reduction could come in at a meagre 10.8 million tonnes saved.
The worst-case scenario also assumes that 90% of homeowners opt for fossil heaters before the ban date of 2026 in large cities and 2028 in smaller towns.
Current market data indicates that the worst case is already happening. Germany’s heater market is in the midst of a boom, with 667,500 heaters sold in the first half of the year, a massive uptick of 44% compared to last year.
Most heaters sold run on gas – 385,000, or up 29% on the first half of 2022 – while oil heater sales surged to 48,500 units, up 102% from last year. Heat pumps are quickly ramping up, totalling 196,500 sales, up 105%.
Demonstration of unity
Germany’s governing coalition was seriously shaken by the row over the boiler ban, resulting in several day-long consultations trying to mend the rifts.
The SPD, Greens, and FDP emerged from the talks keen to demonstrate the government’s harmony and that the outcome of the process was fully in line with their party preferences.
“With the Building Energy Act, we are finally setting out to decarbonise Germany’s building sector after 16 years of standstill,” said the Greens’ Christine-Johanne Schröder, spokesperson for buildings policy.
Her colleague, the FDP’s Lukas Köhler, struck a similar note. “With the new heating law, we support this path to climate neutrality in the building sector in a way that is open to technology, affordable and practice,” he said, stressing that carbon pricing was ultimately key.
[Edited by Zoran Radosavljevic and Frédéric Simon]
