“Long-term thinking is lacking”

Modernising the energy performance of Germany’s building stock contributes to housing shortages due to rising rent costs, Dietmar Walberg, director of the Modern Construction Consortium (ARGE e.V.), said in an interview with Süddeutsche Zeitung. Reducing a building’s energy demand or installing heating systems that run on renewable energy “is often associated with very high costs,” Walberg explained. Grants for modernisation by the government-owned banking institution KfW often overlooked the specific costs for a given building and instead applied the same scheme everywhere in the country, he added. Energy efficiency were “lacking long-term thinking,” Walberg said, calling for a regional differentiation of financial support schemes.

Read the interview in German here.

For background on the effects of efficiency measures, read the CLEW dossier The Energiewende and Efficiency.