Mothball Habeck’s design
Climate researchers recommend restarting the heating law
05/21/2023, 11:00 a.m
Can a project spark more controversy than the traffic light coalition’s heating law? The director of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research presents the parties with a possible solution: back to the beginning – and then please do it differently.
Climate researcher Ottmar Edenhofer advocates that the federal government give up its controversial heating law and restart the project. “The traffic light got tangled up in climate protection,” says the director of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK) in the “Neue Osnabrücker Zeitung”. “My recommendation would be to take a deep breath, take a step back and start over with the heating transition.”
Instead, Edenhofer is in favor of working with emission limits in the heat transition and relying on control via the CO2 price. “Letting the national emissions trading with emission caps work immediately is smarter than the prohibition and bid policy.” An upper limit for emissions can be set in the Fuel Emissions Trading Act (BEHG), which gradually but significantly increases the cost of heating with gas. This could cap the price increase. “With the BEHG, the government really has all the legal options in its hands.” Then people would switch to less CO2-intensive heating systems of their own accord.
The climate researcher said he often hears that higher CO2 prices cannot be enforced politically. “But even detailed regulations like the Heating Exchange Act annoy people and are difficult to enforce. Clear communication from the government that explains to people why heating with gas has to become more expensive, what price increases can be expected and who can expect which reimbursements before the price increases protected would be accepted by the population.”
Scholz sees no problem
The draft law from the Federal Ministry of Economics by Robert Habeck, which has already been passed by the Federal Cabinet, provides that from 2024 onwards every newly installed heating system should be operated with 65 percent green energy. This should apply to all owners up to the age of 80. Existing oil and gas heating systems can continue to be operated, and broken ones can be repaired. According to the Ministry of Economic Affairs, the switch should be socially cushioned by subsidies.
But criticism has come from the co-governing FDP, which says it still has “around 100 questions for Habeck” and is calling for a “fundamental overhaul”. The Greens, on the other hand, want to pass the law as quickly as possible in the Bundestag so that it can come into force. The SPD, in turn, wants to start parliamentary deliberations quickly, but then make changes.
In an interview with ntv, Chancellor Olaf Scholz said that all points of criticism of the controversial law had been largely dispelled. “Most of the concerns that are currently being discussed” are “no longer justified with regard to the draft law that currently exists, but relate to a rough draft that is not intended to be published at all,” he said on the sidelines of the G7 summit in Japan .