In the future, the municipalities are to record heating data for every building in Germany. This is based on a draft law that the Federal Building Ministry of Department Head Klara Geywitz (SPD) has drawn up together with the Federal Ministry of Economics by Robert Habeck (Greens). Accordingly, the data should serve as a basis for heat planning by the federal states: they should present precise plans on how the heat transition can be implemented in the coming years.
Specifically, these heating plans for large cities should be available by the end of 2026, smaller cities should have two years longer. The responsibility for this lies with the federal states, which can, however, transfer this task directly to the municipalities. The plans should provide information on how buildings or companies have been heated and how much energy is consumed. The law is also intended to set the goal of generating half of the heat in the grid in a climate-neutral manner by 2030. The traffic light coalition sees the heat transition as a central building block to make Germany completely climate-neutral by 2045.
The city council, but also some energy associations, are demanding that the law on municipal heating planning come about at about the same time as the recently highly controversial building energy law, for which the Habeck/Geywitz duo is also responsible. The two legislative projects “are dependent on each other and must be married to each other,” explained Kerstin Andreae, Chair of the Executive Board of the Federal Association of Energy and Water Industries (BDEW) at the beginning of April. The Association of Municipal Enterprises (VKU) calls for the legal integration of the two projects. And Markus Lewe, President of the Association of German Cities and Mayor of Münster, said: “Municipal heat planning is an important tool.” Because in the heat transition there are currently many questions to be answered. Which houses could possibly be connected to a heating network and when? Are geothermal energy, biogas or hydrogen available for the heat supply? “It is therefore very important that cities can approach future heat supply strategically,” said Lewe, calling for legislation to be passed quickly.
The heat transition in Germany is a gigantic project, because today around 75 percent of households are heated with oil and gas
Baden-Württemberg was the first federal state to oblige its 104 large district towns and urban districts to draw up a heat plan by the end of the year. Some municipalities have already completed their concepts. Hesse, Lower Saxony and Schleswig-Holstein have also passed laws on this, and the cities there still have a little more time. In North Rhine-Westphalia, the black-green state government is planning a law on heat planning. But now there should be a nationwide obligation anyway.
For the municipalities, this means first collecting data on which houses on their property are heated and how. The heat transition in Germany is a gigantic project, because today around 75 percent of households are heated with oil and gas. About one eighth is connected to a district heating network, but fossil fuels are often burned to a large extent there too. In urban areas in particular, heating networks will play a decisive role, which in many places are operated by the local public utilities. The draft states: “The expansion of district heating and the decarbonization of the grid-bound heat supply are of outstanding importance for achieving the climate protection goals of the federal government.”
According to the draft, by 2030 at least 50 percent of the heating networks should be fed from renewable energies or waste heat from industrial plants. This is likely to pose significant challenges for some companies. Anyone who builds a new heating network must immediately operate it with at least 65 percent renewable energy. The draft law is to be passed by the cabinet on June 28 and will be presented in the Bundestag after the summer break.