“Outraged and furious”: Germans rebel against the ban on gas boilers

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Frank Krusche says he is not against heat pumps in principle. It’s just that to install one, he’d have to tear down his house and build a new one.

“They only work in low-energy houses, while mine doesn’t,” said Krusche, an engineer in East Berlin. “To make it truly energy efficient, you’d have to rebuild the entire shell, including the roof.”

The reason it even has to consider such drastic action is because of a government bill that effectively bans new gas boilers in Germany from January 1 next year. From then on, newly installed heating systems should be powered by at least 65% renewable sources.

Nicknamed the “thermal hammer” by the popular press, it is one of the most radical pieces of climate legislation Germany has ever produced. Ministers say it is central to the country’s plan to be carbon neutral by 2045.

But the bill has triggered a popular backlash of exceptional intensity. Germans are concerned about the huge cost of switching from gas or oil fired boilers to heat pumps and the tight deadlines the bill imposes.

“People are outraged and furious,” said Petra Uertz of the Residential Property Association. “They can’t understand why it has to happen so fast.”

The controversy over the bill has involved the government of Chancellor Olaf Scholz worst crisis since he took office almost 18 months ago. MPs were due to debate it at first reading this week, but the liberal Free Democratic Party (FDP) – one of three parties in Scholz’s coalition – postponed parliamentary discussion, saying the bill still needed work.

Suddenly, the plan to pass the law before MPs got up for the summer break was thrown into disarray. Green Economy Minister and Deputy Chancellor Robert Habeck, the bill’s main backer, accused the FDP of a “promise failure”.

But the FDP believes it has public opinion on its side. A poll by Civey this week, conducted for Die Zeit newspaper, found that 70% of respondents wanted the bill withdrawn.

“This law affects 66 million Germans. . . and there is enormous concern,” said Marie-Agnes Strack-Zimmermann, senior FDP deputy. The Greens’ obsession with passing it before the summer break was preposterous, she told public broadcaster ARD. “We shouldn’t tie it to a particular date like hell or high water, there are things that need to change first,” she added.

The disquiet is reflected in approval ratings for the Greens, which fell to just 14% this week, two points behind the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD). In regional elections in the city state of Bremen earlier this month, the Greens saw their share of the vote drop by 5 points.

There is consensus in Germany that the way buildings are heated needs to change. Fossil fuels are used to heat around 75% of Germany’s housing stock and around 40% of all boilers are over 20 years old.

However, according to the government’s climate plans, CO2 emissions from buildings are expected to decrease from the current around 112 million tonnes per year to 67 million tonnes per year by 2030. Such a drastic reduction can only be achieved, say the ministers, if gas boilers are replaced by renewable systems such as heat pumps.

“We are not forcing this on people just for fun but because reality is forcing us to do it,” said a senior Green official. “It would be bad policy to say ‘we’re not doing it because it’s difficult.'”

German officials also say the cost of running fossil fuel-based systems will rise sharply in the coming years as the EU’s emissions trading scheme is extended to buildings and people will have to pay for the greenhouse gases emitted by their homes. .

But the proposed ban on boilers has already led to a number of unintended consequences. Thousands of Germans are trying to beat the ban by installing new gas boilers before the January 1 deadline set by the bill, halting CO2 emissions for decades to come.

Some 168,000 gas-fired boilers were sold in Germany in the first quarter of this year, a 100 percent increase over the previous year, according to the ZVSHK, a trade association for heating, plumbing and air-conditioning engineers. of the air.

“This is a big step backwards,” said Helmut Bramann, head of the ZVSHK. “And it’s a result of the great uncertainty in the population.”

One of those taking this step is Maike Biert, a resident of Königswinter on the River Rhine. She toyed with the idea of ​​replacing her 30-year-old gas boiler with a heat pump, but was put off by the €25,000 price tag- €30,000. Eager to pay off the mortgage in seven to eight years and have more money for her children’s education, she balked at the idea of ​​taking out another large loan.

“They’re asking too much of families like ours,” Biert said.

Ministers say generous grants will be made available, with the government covering 30% of the cost of installing a heat pump. But a recent survey by GIH, a trade body for energy consultants, found that German authorities take an average of 125 days to process a grant application for heating and renovation projects.

There are also major concerns that there are not enough plumbers in the country to implement the government’s plans “Wärmewende”, or “warming revolution,” and those that are available have too many other jobs to do.

“Traders currently have a 20-week order backlog,” said ZVSHK’s Bramann. “So even if you take a job now, you might not finish it by January 2024.”

Other problems are lurking, first of all the stress that heat pumps will exert on the German electricity grid. Earlier this month, Vonovia, Europe’s largest publicly traded landlord, said a lack of electricity supply meant some 70 of its newly installed heat pumps could not be connected to the grid.

“This Warmewende it is simply unfeasible,” AfD MP Marc Bernhard said on Wednesday during a Bundestag debate on the issue. “We don’t have enough skilled workers, we don’t have enough electricity and the people don’t have enough money to pay for this madness.”

Even those sympathetic to the government’s climate agenda, such as Frank Krusche, are angry at the haste with which the Greens are trying to push through the ban on boilers.

“The decision-making process should inspire confidence, not sow fear and uncertainty,” Krusche said. “This law just raises more questions than it answers.”