“The climate impact is brutal”
That’s how much CO2 is caused by 300,000 new homes
By Diana Dittmer
07/14/2023 2:59 p.m
In recent years, more has been built in Germany than it has been for more than 20 years. Despite this, there is a shortage of housing. In an interview with ntv.de, the Wohnwende economist Fuhrhop accounts for the fixation on new construction.
The situation on the German housing market is paradoxical: although five million apartments have been built since the turn of the millennium, there is still a shortage of housing. In order to meet the current challenges, the real estate economist Daniel Fuhrhop calls for a radical rethinking of politics. The “construction frenzy” doesn’t just ignore the needs of society, says the expert ntv.de. Because of the climate crisis, society can no longer and does not want to afford it.
The economist criticizes that dramatic changes in the housing market are still simply ignored. In purely mathematical terms, the five million homes that have been built since the turn of the millennium should have created space for almost 10 million people. During this time, the population grew by just over two million, including the 2.3 million Ukraine refugees from last year. Still, there are hardly any vacancies. The crux lies in the use of the housing stock: According to the economist, more and more people are living alone today and on average in significantly more square meters.
Even the traffic light government, which formulated the goal of “constructing 400,000 new apartments per year” in its coalition agreement in order to ease the situation on the housing market, has neither solved the problem nor thought it through, says Fuhrhop. The fact that the government only created around 300,000 new apartments per year brought it ridicule and malice. From a climate point of view, however, the 100,000 new apartments that politicians owe each year are downright a “stroke of luck”.
“New buildings are climate killers”
For his recently published Dissertation “The invisible living space. Housing sufficiency as an answer to housing shortage, climate crisis and loneliness” the economist made a calculation for the first time that shows how harmful to the climate alone the 300,000 apartments in Germany that were successfully built within a year are. The result lies ntv.de exclusively before.
According to his calculations, this new residential construction damages the climate with up to 74 million tons of CO2: This number includes the construction and operation of the apartments, i.e. the concrete as well as the heating. For comparison: The annual operation of all 43 million private households in existing apartments together results in 80 million tons of CO2 – mainly due to heating. This means that the sum of the emissions from 300,000 newly built homes every year is almost as high as the operation of all 43 million existing homes in one year.
“The new buildings are climate killers. The amount of CO2 is brutal. I didn’t expect that 300,000 apartments alone would be such a disaster,” says Fuhrhop. If the traffic light coalition actually achieved its goal of 400,000 apartments, the climate would even be burdened with up to 99 million tons a year.
So far, the research has been based on data on global CO2 emissions. According to the figures circulating, around 40 to just over 50 percent of all greenhouse gases are caused by construction and living. Eight percent of all global greenhouse gas emissions are due to cement production alone. That is twice as much CO2 as air travel produces. In absolute figures, this means around 2.8 billion tons of carbon dioxide every year worldwide.
“The climate impact of building is and will remain devastating. New construction programs the emissions for the coming decades,” says Fuhrhop. The newly built apartments have to be heated, and this is far from being climate-neutral. “Very few realize that even with the favored heat pumps, only half of the electricity comes from renewable energies.” His accusation: Although construction is a climate killer, politicians still reduce their efforts to specifications for more efficient heating technologies or insulation in residential construction – instead of avoiding climate-damaging construction from the outset.
“The brutal emissions destroy the savings”
In the fight against the climate crisis, the traffic light government has aligned its policy with the 1.5 degree target. According to the Climate Protection Act, an average of around five million tons less greenhouse gases should be produced in the building sector by 2030 and a further around seven million tons should be saved in industry (including cement production). New construction takes this goal to the point of absurdity, as the data shows, because it eats up everything that is saved.
“The figures for housing construction in Germany prove that we will destroy the savings on the way to climate neutrality by 2045 if we continue to build on this scale with these brutal emissions. It goes in the opposite direction,” says Fuhrhop.
Daniel Fuhrhop is an economist and author. He advises local authorities on the establishment of social programs, for example to find residential couples based on the “Housing for Help” model. His conclusion: A total of 100,000 apartments could be built in this way every year – without any impact on the climate and with the chance of closeness and neighborliness.
New construction alone will not solve the housing problem. Achieving the climate goals and creating sufficient living space at the same time is a double challenge. Only three measures at the same time led out of the dilemma: build differently, convert instead of building new and create living space without building. “We have to think about building less,” demands the economist.
A total of 100,000 apartments per year, i.e. a full third of new construction, could be replaced by existing social programs by raising unused or “invisible” living space, as Fuhrhop calls it. For example through “Housing for Help”: Younger people move in with older people and don’t pay normal rent, but help in the garden or around the house. In France and Great Britain, professional exchanges bring old and young together. If this were done just as professionally in Germany, this program alone could provide 30,000 trainees and students with housing every year. There is still a lot of room for improvement here.