Anyone hoping for support from the state to build their house in a climate-friendly way needs to be patient: the funding pot is empty for 2023. As the Federal Ministry of Construction in Berlin announced, from December 14th no new applications for the program can be submitted to the state development bank KfW due to exhausted funds. New applications will only be possible again when the 2024 budget comes into force.
“The demand for our new construction funding has exceeded our expectations,” said Construction Minister Klara Geywitz (SPD). “After just three months, the funding pot for the climate-friendly new building was almost empty, so we had to increase it to almost two billion euros.” By December 13th, more than 18,000 funding commitments had been made and around 46,000 climate-friendly housing units had been funded.
There is criticism of the temporary stop from the construction industry
Anyone who meets certain criteria in the areas of energy efficiency, sustainability and CO₂ emissions can apply for funding. For example, heating must be primarily powered by renewable energies and the house must be completely insulated. Last year there was also a funding stop for climate-friendly new buildings towards the end of the year.
There is criticism from the construction industry about the temporary stop to funding. “A run for funding at the end of a year is not a success. It shows the great uncertainty in the market,” says Peter Hübner, President of the Main Association of the German Construction Industry. “Nobody knows what will happen next and everyone is trying to secure the last remaining pieces.” It is already a reality that every second residential construction company is suffering from a lack of orders.
It is not the first funding stop that the KfW Bank has imposed this year: due to the budget dispute, the funding program for cooperative housing was stopped at the end of November. The “Solar Power for Electric Cars” funding program was closed again just a few hours after it opened – the funding had already been used up.