energy
Association of Cities: Heating Act costs municipalities 8 billion euros
A Vaillant heat pump of the “aroTHERM plus” type on a single-family home. photo
© Daniel Reinhardt/dpa
With the plans of the traffic light government to move away from fossil fuels in building heating, high costs are coming up for the municipalities. The Association of Cities also calls for long-term relief.
According to calculations by the German Association of Towns and Municipalities, the previous plans of the traffic light coalition to replace the heating system cost the municipalities at least eight billion euros. 135,000 municipal buildings would have to be equipped with a new heating system by 2045. According to the “Neue Osnabrücker Zeitung” (Monday), the Association of Towns and Municipalities determined that in order to meet the requirements, there would be additional costs per system of EUR 60,000 each.
In order to cope with this, municipalities and the municipal housing industry would have to be given comprehensive and long-term financial support, demanded the general manager of the municipal association, Gerd Landsberg, in the newspaper. He criticized that local authorities have so far been excluded from the promised funding. Most of the approximately 180,000 municipal administration buildings, schools, hospitals and sports halls are still heated with oil or gas. According to the information, fossil fuel-powered heating systems are still installed in four out of ten cases in new buildings.
heralded farewell
According to the draft law passed by the Federal Cabinet, from 2024 every newly installed heating system should be operated with 65 percent renewable energy. This is intended to herald the departure from gas and oil heating systems. There is no immediate obligation to replace heating systems in existing buildings. If a device breaks down and can no longer be repaired, there are transitional periods. Boilers should only be able to run on fossil fuels by the end of 2044. The plans are hotly disputed. The parliamentary deliberations are just beginning. The amendments to the law should be passed before the summer break.
According to the Association of Towns and Municipalities, if the law comes into force as previously planned, 7,000 heating systems would have to be converted to renewables or newly installed every year. The association put the annual additional costs at 400 million euros. It can be assumed that the costs will be amortized over the operating times. But the annual investment requirement is enormous, said Landsberg. In addition, there are countless cases of expensive energy renovations, because almost 60 percent of the buildings are 45 years or older.