Katharina Dröge, the Green party faction leader in the Bundestag, warned that the current draft for the Building Modernization Act poses serious risks of high costs for tenants and insufficient climate protection.
Speaking to RTL and ntv’s “Frühstart” on Wednesday, Dröge sharply criticized the CDU and SPD, claiming that the only area they could agree upon was “tearing apart climate protection in Germany”. She highlighted a major flaw in the law: it permits the installation of climate-damaging heating systems even after 2045, by which point Germany is slated to be climate-neutral. Calling this an “absolute rejection of German climate goals” she deemed the plan “absolutely irresponsible”.
The initial plan by the Union and the SPD involved introducing quotas for synthetic gas and biogas. According to calculations from the Fraunhofer Institute (ISI), implementing this would impose an additional cost of €55 per month on tenants comparing gas heating to a heat pump in 2025. Critically, this additional monthly burden is projected to rise to €272 by 2045. While the coalition later moderated this by mandating that landlords help cover part of these additional heating expenses, Dröge found this revision insufficient. She countered that even a lower cost still constitutes “additional costs” particularly when combined with rapidly rising fossil fuel prices, calling the measure “socially totally unfair”.
Furthermore, Dröge stressed that the law itself creates chaos and profound uncertainty. She noted, “Heat pumps were seeing very positive development, and sales figures are on the rise. Now, the uncertainty is back”. She concluded that future legislation must eliminate this chaos by ensuring reliable planning.
