Heating talk at Maybrit Illner: “We didn’t manage to take people with us”

The discussion about the Building Energy Act does not stop. If everything works out, the law should be discussed in the Bundestag in two weeks in the first reading. Then it goes into the parliamentary procedure and could be decided before the parliamentary summer recess in July. That would also be important, because then the discussions about it during the election campaign before the state elections in Bavaria and Hesse would be off the table. At Maybrit Illner on ZDF, the guests once again exchange their demands for the coming heat transition, some of which are already known. It becomes clear that the negotiations in the Bundestag will not be easy. It would also be different. Denmark did it.

1979. In Germany, the demonstrations against the construction of nuclear power plants reach their first peak. Since a heat supply law is passed in Denmark. The municipalities are asked to submit a regional heating plan. A district heating network is set up. First, fossil fuels are used for heating. From the turn of the millennium, the Danes gradually switched their heating to renewable energies, promoting heat pumps, but biomass is also used as a heating option. A Co2 tax is introduced, but this is low in European comparison. Oil heating is now completely dispensed with, and almost eight percent of all Danish households are still heated with gas. For comparison: In Germany, about half of all households use this form of energy for heating. The Danes have already achieved the heat transition that is currently being discussed in Germany. Thirty years ago, the Danes filed away the dispute that had just started in our country.

“There’s less messing around”

SPD General Secretary Kevin Kühnert is happy. He recognizes that the tone of voice in the discussion about the heating law has changed. “There’s less fussing around now,” he says at Maybrit Illner. “We are doing what is our privilege as MPs, which is working on the bill to improve it.” That must now be continued in Parliament.

Katrin Göring-Eckardt from the Greens is self-critical. “We didn’t manage to take people with us,” she says. She accuses the opposition in particular of having fabricated a lot into the law. “Many of the alleged bans were not real.” Now people should finally be able to plan, but that will only be possible once the law has been passed. If that didn’t happen, it could get really expensive for the population because of the rising CO2 price.

CDU General Secretary Mario Czaja also criticized the fact that the population was unsettled. Czaja calls for better funding options and more energy openness and not just relying on the heat pump.

Here Czaja is clearly telling the untruth. It is true that the federal government has placed the heat pump very clearly in the foreground in the expert draft of the bill. However, if you read the current bill, you will see that it already contains nine different forms of energy that could be used for heating if they were available locally.

There is certainly room for improvement, but it is also a problem, says BDI boss Siegfried Russwurm. “At the moment there are just three companies in the western world that can build hydrogen-capable gas turbines,” he says at Illner. In addition, the discussion about the heat transition does not go far enough for him. “We don’t have an energy concept,” he says, and that’s what’s urgently needed in addition to the heat transition. Germany needs backup power plants that can be used during longer periods of cold weather. Germany relies on hydrogen-capable gas power plants. However, its financing and who is building it is unclear.

Municipal heat planning

For some time now, the opposition has identified another error in the bill, which Czaja also points out: Actually, before the heating law comes into force, the municipal heating plan should be in place, he says. “The storage of regenerative energies and the conversion into hydrogen enables enormous amounts of heat in district heating networks. You didn’t take that into account in your planning.” Heating with district heating should not be neglected. However, there are still no municipal heating plans.

Katrin Göring-Eckardt disagrees: “I’m in favor of doing this in parallel with municipal heat planning. Municipalities have long since been prepared for the fact that heat planning has to be done.” Kühnert adds: “We cannot stop the heating exchange for another ten months.” Except that there will not be any municipal heat planning. Here Kühnert is talking up a draft law that the cabinet passed this week. According to this, municipalities with more than 100,000 inhabitants will have to submit a corresponding concept in three and a half years at the earliest.

So one thing is clear: There is still a lot of ambiguity about what the Building Energy Act will look like in the end and when it will apply. Nevertheless, Göring-Eckardt and Kühnert are certain that the Bundestag will approve it by the summer break. Czaja sees it completely differently: “It won’t be this law,” he says at the end of the show.