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From the coming year, every new heating system should be operated with 65 percent green energy. This is what the planned heating law provides for. A question from the left shows that federal buildings also have some catching up to do.
All of Germany is discussing the question of how climate-friendly heating will be in future. The traffic light is arguing about whether the Building Energy Act (GEG) will be passed before the summer break. The FDP is slowing down, the Greens are putting pressure on and the SPD is announcing changes.
But how does the heating situation actually look in federal real estate? There is a request from the left-wing parliamentary group and an answer from the FDP-led Federal Ministry of Finance.
According to this, only 0.96 percent of federal properties are currently equipped with heating systems that heat at least 65 percent with renewable energies (primarily heat pumps and biomass boilers). In the Ministry of Economics, which is helping to push the new heating law, it is only 0.05 percent of the area.
139 heat pumps or biomass boilers
So far there are 139 heat pumps or biomass boilers in all federal ministries. The Ministry of Defense comes off best. There are 67 heat pumps or biomass boilers to heat the 108,000 square meters. This means that 0.33 percent of the heatable area in the ministry is heated with renewable energies.
Left parliamentary group leader Dietmar Bartsch demands from the traffic light government that they have to lead the way with the heating system in federal real estate. “Not even one percent of federal real estate meets the heating standard that Robert Habeck wants to prescribe for the population from next year. The Minister of Economics should first go down into the boiler room of federal real estate and have it converted there. Craftsmen and industry would be busy for a long time.”
federal ministries perform poorly
However, for the buildings of the federal ministries – as for all other buildings – functioning heating systems do not have to be removed. However, the federal ministries perform poorly in comparison with all existing buildings in Germany. After all, the share of renewable energies in building heating is 15 percent. This number is from 2021, is in the draft law for the new building energy law and was the basis for the federal government initiating the heating transition.
According to the Federal Agency for Real Estate Tasks, all federal properties should be heated without fossil fuels and in a climate-neutral manner by 2045 at the latest. By then, the heating systems in the federal ministries will have to be extensively rebuilt. How much that will cost is still unclear. The only thing that is clear is that it will be expensive – for the taxpayer.