Heating exchange law costs municipalities 8 billion euros
The German Association of Cities is calling for improvements to the plans for replacing the heating system (archive image)
Those: dpa/Arno Burgi
Hundreds of thousands of municipal buildings, such as schools or sports halls, are often still heated with oil. They are also affected by the planned building energy law. According to Gerd Landsberg, President of the German Association of Towns and Municipalities, the municipalities are threatened with billions in costs.
NAccording to calculations by the German Association of Towns and Municipalities (DStGB), the building energy law (GEG) of the traffic light costs the municipalities at least eight billion euros. A total of 135,000 municipal buildings would have to be equipped with a new heating system by 2045. If the conditions were met, there would be additional costs of 60,000 euros per system, the DStGB said when asked by the “Neue Osnabrücker Zeitung” (NOZ).
In order to be able to cope with this, the municipalities and the municipal housing industry would have to be “comprehensively and long-term financially supported”, demanded DStGB general manager Gerd Landsberg in an interview with the “NOZ”. He criticized that the municipalities have so far been excluded from the subsidies that Economics Minister Robert Habeck has promised.
Most of the approximately 180,000 municipal administration buildings, schools, hospitals and sports halls are still heated with oil or gas. According to the GEG, starting next year, heating systems that are not operated with at least 65 percent renewable energies should no longer be installed in them. So far, four out of ten new buildings still have fossil fuel heating systems installed, which is to be banned from 2024.
If the law comes as the traffic light intended, 7,000 heating systems would have to be converted to renewables or newly installed every year, the DStGB announced. The association put the annual additional costs at 400 million euros. It can be assumed that the costs will be amortized over the operating times. “But the annual investment requirement is enormous,” said Landsberg. In addition, there are countless cases of expensive energy renovations, because almost 60 percent of the buildings are 45 years or older.
The municipalities accuse Minister of Economics Habeck of forcing expensive heating replacements before there is clarity about possible alternatives such as connection to heating networks. Because the draft law on municipal heating planning is not yet available. “Here the second step is required before the first,” said Landsberg of the “NOZ”. It is “essential” to coordinate the exchange of heating and the regulations for municipal heat planning.
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