Climate activist Luisa Neubauer has called the key points of the proposed revision to Germany’s Building Energy Act essentially inadequate. “The federal government seems to be pushing the issue aside, but it is now facing the constitutional court because we are suing against its insufficient climate measures” she told the newspapers of the Funke Media Group in their Tuesday editions.
Neubauer argues that climate protection, which distributes the burden of the crisis and the cost of mitigation unevenly, could be unconstitutional. “Amid this legally fraught situation the government is now presenting a law that, compared to solid climate protection, is as effective as a Tofu sausage” she said. She went on to say that if the law drafted by Green Party co‑chair Robert Habeck were a ‘heating hammer’ then this version is at least a ‘heating horror’.
The activist accuses the government-and especially Energy Minister Katherina Reiche of the CDU-of betting on biogas when the supply is insufficient. “This is energy policy based on calculations from a fairy‑tale forest” she said. “It plays on falling consumer costs while at the same time encouraging people to cling longer to fossil gas, which of course becomes increasingly expensive”.
“That policy lures people into a cost trap, something even the Union knows” Neubauer added. “How much does the CDU have to disdain climate and consumer protection, and how little must it respect its constitutional duties, before it presents this proposal to the public in earnest?”
She accused the cabinet as a whole-Minister Katherina Reiche, CDU parliamentary leader Jens Spahn, and others-of staging a cultural war against sustainability that will now be played out in “our heating warehouses”. “The costs are borne by all of us. Only the gas lobby gains, having been blamed for both the climate goals and the planability of the heating transition” she warned. “If the SPD does not stand against it, then everyone else should”.
