Greens and FDP: United in dislike

The FDP speaks of a “ban on heating”, the Greens insist on coalition discipline. The new building energy law reveals the conflicts between the two parties – and shows that their DNA could not be more different.

There is a word in the world: “heating ban”. At the federal party conference of the FDP at the weekend, it was the common name for the building energy law, with which the federal government wants to regulate the installation of new heating systems from next year: 65 percent of the energy must then come from renewable energies. Pure oil or gas burners should no longer be allowed in new installations.

The problem with the law is that the FDP had a say in it. Its party leader, Federal Minister of Finance Christian Lindner, managed to get a memorandum of understanding when the Federal Cabinet was passed in mid-April – Lindner stated in it that he still sees room for improvement compared to the draft law that the Green-led Federal Ministry of Economics and the SPD-led Ministry of Construction had drawn up. Such changes to a draft law are also common in parliamentary procedures – the former parliamentary group leader of the SPD in the Bundestag, Peter Struck, had already stated with the self-confidence of a long-time parliamentarian: No law leaves the Bundestag the way it comes in.

“Normal State Practice”

The party chairman Lindner, who was confirmed in office with a large majority, tried to ARD interview then also to downplay his written reservations about the law passed unanimously in the cabinet as “normal state practice”: Other legislative projects have already been launched with recorded concerns of individual coalition partners, said Lindner. One sees the whole thing critically, but does not want to delay the adoption process unnecessarily.

The truth is: Lindner is primarily using resistance to the modernization of the heating system to raise the profile of his own party. Since the Liberals have been part of the federal government, they have lost five state elections with a bang – and in three weeks a new parliament will be elected in Bremen. Lindner must get his party back on the road to success. Nationwide, the FDP had come dangerously close to the five percent mark in the polls.

So Lindner relies on demarcation. He describes the coalition partners at federal level, the SPD and the Greens, as “two left-wing parties” – which means that the FDP has the role of being the corrective against escalating debt, state regulation mania – and the “heating ban”.

Communicatively stumbled

Lindner also knows that there is basically no alternative to the planned conversion of millions of private heating systems in Germany to climate-friendly heat generation. However, he and his party are all the more critical in asking in detail how the conversion should work – and what the whole thing will cost, for the individual homeowner, for companies, and ultimately for tenants as well.

In addition, the modernization of the heating system is a core concern of the Green Federal Minister of Economics and Vice Chancellor Robert Habeck, who, to put it mildly, stumbled communicatively on the project himself. To the delight of the FDP: In the public debate, they are currently not giving a good hair to Habeck’s “heating ban”. “Opposition within the government” is what some call it.

The matter is simple: If Germany wants to be climate-neutral by 2045 (more precisely: it has to, because the Federal Republic has committed itself to this by law), then federal policy must start right now to drive out building heating systems from burning fossil fuels. Normally, heating systems have an average service life of 20 years. Nobody seriously claims that such a conversion can be achieved in a short time – but there has to be a start.

The FDP and the back door

This is exactly what the Building Energy Act dares: It is intended to regulate how much the state promotes the replacement of old technology, which alternative forms of energy are permitted (far more than the often cited heat pump). It also does not hide the fact that climate protection is associated with high investments – but it will endeavor to cushion unreasonable demands in cases of hardship.

The sustained resistance of the FDP to the building energy law, on the other hand, follows a well-established pattern: “Openness to technology” is the mantra of the liberals against what they consider to be too narrow state regulations. With the planned EU-wide ban on new registrations of cars with combustion engines from 2035, the FDP ensured that a back door should remain open for so-called e-fuels, i.e. environmentally friendly fuels without a CO2 footprint.

The Greens call for coalition discipline

And the greens? They call on the government partner FDP to exercise coalition discipline when it comes to replacing the heating system. The Liberals must stand by what was agreed in the coalition agreement, said parliamentary group leader Katharina Dröge, for example. The push for concrete climate protection for the Greens has long since become a tightrope walk itself: On the one hand, they are the party in the traffic light that has the strongest energy (and sometimes imagination) when it comes to restructuring industrial society.

On the other hand, however, the Greens are in latent danger of overstepping the bounds of state regulation and dictating decisions to individuals. You don’t even have to look at the “Veggie Day” debacle to realize that when it comes to the question of how rigorously politics can intervene in individual decisions, the Greens simply have their own DNA – and are therefore the natural antipodes to an FDP that gives the freedom rights of the individual the highest priority.

In the end a compromise

As early as January 1st next year, the new building energy law is to come into force. So the Bundestag does not have much time to answer the many pending questions about funding, hardship rules or transitional periods and to pour them into a final law. In the end there will be a compromise – because in the absence of other power options it is unlikely that the FDP will raise the coalition question on the heating issue.

The difference between the coalition partners, the FDP and the Greens, in terms of their understanding of the state and their ideas about the restructuring of industrial society – it is hardly anywhere as clear as in the dispute over the “heating ban”.