The day after, the lack of understanding remains. Thomas von Sarnowski, head of the Bavarian Greens, is audibly wrestling with the question marks on the phone. And a tweet from the political competition raises some of these, especially from the point of view of the Greens. The CSU accused them of “state heating espionage” on Wednesday via Twitter – including a photo montage of Federal Minister of Economics Robert Habeck, how he lured over his glasses from outside into a dark apartment. The Greens rely on bureaucracy and high penalties, it said on the CSU Twitter account, and: “First heating hammer, now heating pillory!” A campaign gag? Or maybe a sign, as Sarnowski suspects, that the CSU “does not know its own laws”?
In any case, things seem to be getting mixed up when it comes to heating, on Twitter anyway, but not just there anymore. Sometimes the dispute ignites over heat pumps, sometimes over firewood, sometimes over subsidies, sometimes over the pace at which the housing sector is to become more climate-friendly. Often in the thick of things: the CSU. In Munich, the traffic light in Berlin was discovered as a natural enemy and heating as an election campaign hit. Even at the risk of accusations leveled at others boomeranging back.
The latest highlight of the dispute and at the same time the best illustrative material: a draft law by Habeck and Federal Building Minister Klara Geywitz (SPD) that became public on Wednesday. This stipulates that the municipalities will in future record heating data for every building in Germany. With their help, plans should then be drawn up on how the heat transition can be implemented in the coming years, according to the federal government – or there is a risk of “heating espionage”, according to the CSU. The CSU operates the itself, if you want to use this word at all.
The party was promptly informed of this by Twitter users, including Sarnowski. Because the Bavarian Climate Protection Act has long included data collection. Article six obliges district chimney sweeps to record heating systems “for the purpose of spatially high-resolution energy and emissions reporting”. Since 2022, the type of heating, fuel, nominal heat output, age of the system and information about its operation, location and address must be documented. The data must be transmitted annually to the State Office for Statistics in a “machine-readable and electronic form”.
The collection of data is not new, nor is it unusual. In order to establish new heating systems across the board, you need an overview of the old ones. Baden-Württemberg has already required its municipalities to create climate-friendly heating plans. There are similar laws in Hesse, Lower Saxony and Schleswig-Holstein. On its website, the Bavarian State Agency for Energy and Climate Protection even recommends that local authorities record their entire CO₂ emissions – and based on this, define and implement “steps for reducing” emissions in all areas.
When asked by SZ, CSU General Secretary Martin Huber even confirmed the allegations. “The traffic light wants to create a bureaucratic monster and spy on people,” he says. The traffic light plans went far beyond the sweepstakes data of the district chimney sweeps. The federal government wants to “know the individual energy consumption of all citizens”, which deeply affects their privacy.
Actually, there would be enough question marks around data collection itself; how it is supposed to work and who gets closer to the truth. Nevertheless, on the Twitter day after that, the main discussion was about style instead of content. The Greens naturally judge the CSU statements differently – and see themselves as the target of political agitation. It is a draft law, says head of state Sarnowski: It is still unclear which heating data the federal government will actually collect in the end. It is even possible that in the end “every Bavarian district chimney sweep knows more” than Berlin. But instead of “just taking a breather” and waiting, the CSU is stoking people’s fears and concerns. “But if I only practice fear, I won’t do good politics anymore.”