New, energy-saving houses and rapid renovation and insulation of old buildings are intended to drive the ecological turnaround in Munich. With three corresponding fundamental motions and an accompanying decision in the planning committee, the coalition wants to open a decisive, new chapter in saving greenhouse gases less than a year and a half after its start.
According to group vice-president Dominik Krause, the Greens will invest a large part of their annual climate budget of 100 million euros in this. Munich could only become climate-neutral by 2035, “if we build new buildings as energy-efficiently as possible, supply them with renewable energies and push ahead with building renovations with great effort,” said Krause. Therefore, “clear minimum standards” should apply to urban houses.
In the future, the city is to build new public buildings such as schools using the zero or plus energy standard. This means that a building must not consume more energy than it produces, for example, from solar energy on the roof. Or that even better, self-generated electricity is left over and can be fed in.
The specifications should also be checked for ongoing projects. The Greens also want to make progress with the insulation of old buildings. “Renovating the existing building is a mammoth task, but there is huge potential for CO2 savings to be found here,” said parliamentary group leader Anna Hanusch. The municipal housing companies Gewofag and GWG should set a good example and increase the renovation rate of their buildings to four percent. The administration should also check whether this number is enough to become climate-neutral in 2035 and investigate a corresponding promotion of large, price-controlled housing stocks.
The SPD shares these goals and, in the person of parliamentary group leader Christian Müller, promises that “we will carefully ensure that no new additional burdens arise for the tenants”. For the Social Democrats, when it comes to housing, the focus should not only be on saving energy, they are also pushing for a higher rate of new construction in the city in order to relieve the market. In the future, the coalition wants to have 4,000 new apartments built in Munich each year, for which affordable rents can be achieved. 2000 of these are to be built by GWG and Gewofag, the other half to be contributed by cooperatives and private entrepreneurs. However, GWG and Gewofag have only achieved their previous goal of 1,250 apartments once in the past four years.
The coalition released its housing application package on the same day that the city council’s planning committee dealt with the issue. The occasion was an almost 100-page resolution proposal, in which City Building Councilor Elisabeth Merk describes what urban planning can contribute to the goal of climate neutrality by 2035. The central instrument is to be a so-called “climate roadmap” for all future urban planning. This should also apply if new building rights are created with a development plan. Concepts for energy, mobility and urban climate should be mandatory, as well as photovoltaic systems.
Opposition criticizes the plan “costs a lot of money”
In the debate, the chairman of the Greens parliamentary group Hanusch pointed out that in future, even before urban planning competitions for quarters, “boundaries” should be identified where buildings would have to move back a little “in order to preserve green corridors and biodiversity”. If you only start with the climate test afterwards, it will only take a lot of effort to take into account. An example that Hanusch did not mention explicitly, but which fits with her argumentation, is the Eggarten district in the north of Munich. Up to 2,000 apartments are to be built there, but the gym for the school campus is planned in the middle of an undeveloped strip up to 235 meters wide, which will serve as a cold air corridor.
The future energy standard 40 planned for new buildings by municipal housing associations could only be a minimum standard, “because we are of the opinion that it falls short of the mark,” said City Councilor Müller. For example, it is not about the cold supply, “which is now a big issue for us in the summer too”. He also emphasized “that we must also continue to think about how residential construction can remain affordable. We need as little material consumption as possible and the longest possible life cycles for houses.” He said he still demanded a lot of innovation from the construction industry.
Sharp criticism came from the opposition. Jörg Hoffmann, leader of the FDP / Bayernpartei parliamentary group, emphasized that he shared the aims of the bill of contributing to climate neutrality in the “huge sector” of housing construction. He accused Green-Red of dishonesty: “This proposal costs a lot of money, namely the municipal housing associations and private investors,” said Hoffmann. “How does that fit together with the city’s rent policy, especially the five-year rent moratorium at GWG and Gewofag, which Lord Mayor Reiter gave out as a gift before the local elections?” Climate protection policy in the housing sector must “be paid for by everyone, including users”.
Heike Kainz (CSU) criticized the fact that the new specifications would extend the planning times of construction projects even more, “with the result that the completion figures will not increase, but decrease. We also believe that the goals are in order, but to this extent it won’t work from our point of view. ” Brigitte Wolf von der Linken complained that the debate was about the new building, but that as many renovations as possible would be much more important. However, there is not enough staff to drive this forward. At this point, Alexander Reissl (CSU) jumped to the side, saying that GWG and Gewofag, for example, will not be able to carry out the necessary renovations by 2035, “not even if you set six or eight percent renovation quota – because the coal is not there”.
Lord Mayor Dieter Reiter (SPD) emphasized that there had to be “mixed financing” with federal and state subsidies. But it’s too easy to just point your finger there. The city will also have to siphon off more of the “planning profits” from private investors. “And there will be a third pillar: money from the city budget, the whole thing is called housing policy.”