The federal government is not doing enough to combat the housing shortage
Published
Across Germany, the federal government only awarded four plots of land at a lower price so that social housing could be built. Yet it is authorised and actually required to do so.
The fact that the federal government is not taking its responsibility for providing housing across the country very lightly, or at least is not using all its resources in the fight against the housing shortage, is shown by a small question from the Greens on the business of the federal government's central sales organisation for public land, or Bima for short. Bima has made just four building plots available nationwide at favourable prices for social housing construction - although it has been legally authorised and actually required to do so for almost two years.
„Dramatic for all those who depend on affordable housing"This is what Christian Kühn, a member of the Green Party in the Bundestag, calls it, because 60,000 social housing units are no longer subsidised every year and thus no longer for households with low incomes are available. "In view of the many very tight housing markets, Bima should actually set a good example and resolutely oppose any kind of price gouging," says Kühn.
The project "Energy sufficiency - strategies and instruments for a technical, systemic and cultural transformation to sustainably limit energy demand in the building/housing consumer environment", funded by the BMBF, was successfully completed at the end of 2016. The project investigated how energy-efficient everyday routines, social practices and lifestyle aspects can be harmonised with the requirements of sustainable development and how the structural and political framework conditions must be designed so that energy sufficiency becomes more acceptable and practicable in everyday life. Reduction potentials for household electricity consumption were quantified for the three energy sufficiency approaches of reduction, substitution and adaptation.
The results were presented in the form of sufficiency spectra for selected fields of application. Subsequently, policy approaches to support energy sufficiency in private households were analysed and proposals for an integrated package of policy instruments for energy efficiency and sufficiency were developed. The findings of the project have been incorporated into an internet-based household electricity check, a handbook on sustainable product design for the appliance industry and the development of proposals for national and EU instruments to reduce electricity consumption and promote municipal climate protection.
Project partner:
ifeu Institute for Energy and Environmental Research Heidelberg gGmbH (ifeu)
Wuppertal Institute for Climate, Environment and Energy gGmbH (WI)
Berlin University of the Arts/Design Research Lab (UdK)
Research Centre for Sustainability and Climate Policy (FNK)
Germanwatch welcomes MEPs' call for a higher EU climate target for 2030 and greenhouse gas neutrality by 2050 at the latest
Bonn (25 October 2018). The European Parliament is stepping up the pace on climate action. MEPs today gave the EU negotiating delegation for the UN climate summit in Katowice in December a mandate in which they call for the EU to raise its greenhouse gas reduction target from the current 40 per cent (below 1990 levels) to 55 per cent. The parliamentarians are aiming for greenhouse gas neutrality by 2050 at the latest, which would mean reducing emissions to almost zero. "We are pleased that the MPs are responding directly to the findings of the latest IPCC report on the 1.5-degree target," says Christoph Bals, Political Director of Germanwatch. "This is a wake-up call for the German government. The Grand Coalition should now finally support the European Parliament, the European Commission and the progressive member states in raising the EU climate targets for 2030 and 2050. The success of the upcoming climate summit in Poland will depend in part on whether the EU comes forward," said Bals.
The European Parliament supports the climate targets that the plaintiffs in the People's Climate Case are also calling for to protect their fundamental rights. The European legislator's response is eagerly awaited these days. Christoph Bals: "We hope that the forthcoming response by the European Parliament and the Council will also be characterised by this new departure in climate policy."
In the People's Climate Case, people affected by climate change are petitioning the EU to raise its climate targets.
BN - Is the roof of my house or company building suitable for a photovoltaic system or a solar thermal system? This question can now be answered quickly and conveniently online with the help of the new solar roof cadastre of the city of Bonn. In a building-specific map display, a coloured marker indicates whether and to what extent a roof is suitable for energy generation by means of solar power. Step by step, further information, for example on the economic efficiency, can be retrieved via a yield calculator.
The suitability of the roofs of all 129,000 buildings in the city for solar energy generation was recalculated using the latest, improved data. For this purpose, elevation grid data was used, which was determined by the district government of Cologne by means of laser scanning in spring 2016. Compared to the previous version from 2010, the new Bonn solar roof cadastre features, among other things, a fourfold higher resolution and a more differentiated designation of the roof areas.
The suitability of the roof surfaces for electricity generation via photovoltaic systems as well as for domestic water heating and, for the first time, also for supporting building heating via solar thermal collectors was calculated. The calculations also took into account the current changes in the framework conditions with regard to feed-in tariffs and self-consumption of generated solar power.
How the application works
In the city map, the installable system size and many additional data such as yields and savings potentials can be displayed for each building. In a newly developed yield calculator, costs and yields can be calculated and compared by entering additional user-specific information such as electricity consumption or household size. In this way, every owner can quickly gain an overview of the suitability of his or her building for the use of solar energy. Detailed instructions are available at www.bonn.de/...solardachkataster.php.
The City of Bonn points out that the information from the solar roof cadastre is an initial non-binding assessment. Essential prerequisites for a decision to build a system, such as the condition of the roof or the static suitability, can only be clarified by suitable specialist companies or qualified consulting organisations. Information on this can be found on the website of the solar roof register.
Bonn roofs have potential
According to the potential analysis of the solar roof cadastre, 6,800,000 square metres in Bonn are suitable for solar power generation. This corresponds to about the size of 950 football fields. Approximately 800,000 megawatt hours of electricity could be generated on this area. This could cover about 50 percent of the total electricity consumption in Bonn. For solar thermal energy, the result of the potential analysis shows 88,461 buildings in Bonn that could be used for this form of energy generation. This corresponds to about 70 percent of the buildings in Bonn.
The federal government's goal of reducing daily land consumption to 30 hectares per day is a long way off. Currently, daily land consumption for settlement and transport still averages 66 hectares per day. This year's 30-hectare day thus fell on 15 June. Since the beginning of the year until this day, so much land has been built up nationwide that no more land may be used for settlement and transport until the end of the year if the 30 hectare target is to be met.
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