Switzerland increases subsidies for small PV systems from April 2021
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The Ministry of Energy plans to increase the performance contribution for solar power plants up to 30 kilowatts in the coming year. This is intended to enable significantly more private roofs to be used for solar power generation in the future.
The increase in subsidies for 2021 from an additional 46 million Swiss francs to then 422 million is intended to counteract the impending collapse in the addition of new PV systems caused by the Corona crisis.
This is the first systematic evaluation of property ownership in Berlin and the various business models behind it. It opens the black box of large private property owners, about whom little has been known until now. The study describes hitherto unknown owners with more than 3,000 apartments as well as those who are below this threshold and about whom little is known so far.
"The study dispels the myth of the nice little private landlord as the main player in the real estate market, as well as the myth that selling condominiums to owner-occupants under current conditions contributes to social security and affordable housing," says study author Christoph Trautvetter, head of the Rosa Luxemburg Foundation's "Who owns the city?" project.
The uninterrupted price increases on the housing market bring the owners immense unearned returns of sometimes more than 20 percent a year. The study also compares business figures and practices of listed housing companies with their state-owned and cooperative counterparts.
"The sell-out of the city continues, although politically, especially by the Red-Red-Green Party, it is being resisted: for example, through the municipal right of first refusal, but also through the scandalisation of share deals and initiatives for more transparency. In the real estate market, both financial resources and access to information are very unevenly distributed. With its study on the disclosure of the ownership of real estate in Berlin, the Rosa-Luxemburg-Stiftung is doing important political education work and is thus providing actors with the tools they need to inform themselves and defend themselves against the sell-off of their city," says Daniela Trochowski, executive director of the Rosa-Luxemburg-Stiftung.
The trial will be held on November 10, 2020 at 6:00 p.m. via Livestream will be presented. Participants: Christoph Trautvetter (author of the study, project leader "RLS-Cities - Who owns the city?"), Daniela Trochowski (executive director of the Rosa Luxemburg Foundation), Carsten Schatz (co-chair of the parliamentary group DIE LINKE in the Berlin House of Representatives), Rouzbeh Taheri (representative of the IniForum Berlin and spokesperson for "Expropriating Deutsche Wohnen and Co"). Stefan Thimmel (Housing and Urban Policy Officer at the Rosa Luxemburg Foundation) will moderate.
Tenants can also contact www.wemgehoertdiestadt.de can dive into the data of the research with just a few clicks. The website contains further data on the owners presented in the study and on more than two hundred other players in the Berlin real estate market. It thus makes it easier for tenants to search for further clues about the homeowners on the basis of their address or the company they know.
Source: Rosa Luxemburg Foundation PM of 10.11.2020
The Rosenstein urban planning competition recently ended with the decision on the winning design. First place went to the Stuttgart-based asp Architekten/Koeber Landschaftsarchitektur consortium. Detlef Kron, Head of the Office for Urban Planning and Housing, opened the exhibition on the Rosenstein competition in the Church of St. Maria at Tübinger Straße 36 in Stuttgart on Friday, 27 September, at 5 pm.
Dr. Detlef Kron (right), Head of the Office for Urban Planning and Housing, opened the exhibition on the urban planning competition. Also present were Cem Arat from the winning Stuttgart consortium asp Architekten/Koeber Landschaftsarchitektur (centre) and Domenik Schleicher, lay chairman of the St. Maria parish council. Photo: Thomas Wagner/City of Stuttgart
At the opening event, Kron said: "The Rosenstein urban planning competition was a complete success: with over 50 submissions from international planning offices, the city of Stuttgart has received a wide range of design ideas for the future Rosenstein quarter. So that the people of Stuttgart can now also get a picture of them, we will be exhibiting the results in the Church of St. Maria over the next four weeks."
The Office of Urban Planning and Housing is displaying all the submitted works from the competition in the exhibition. In addition to plans, drawings, and information about each submitted proposal, revised first and second place models will also be on display. The exhibition will be open for viewing daily (except October 3) between 10am and 6pm until October 25, 2019. Admission to the exhibition is free of charge.
Since 2017, the parish of St. Maria in the south of Stuttgart has made its church available for events other than church services. Whether theatre, café, gallery or marketplace - for two years now, the church of St. Maria has been tested as a space for togetherness with the implementation of various event formats.
Urban planning competition 2018 and public participation
In summer 2018, the city of Stuttgart announced the "international open urban planning competition Rosenstein - Ideas for the new district". The aim of the planning competition was to obtain an urban and open space planning design as a model for the future development of the Rosenstein district. A total of 54 international planning offices took part. Beforehand, citizens were able to contribute their own wishes and ideas for the Rosenstein Quarter at various information events and workshops held by the City of Stuttgart. These were incorporated into the competition.
The Rosenstein development area is currently considered the largest construction project to be realized in Stuttgart in the near future. It stretches between the main railway station, Nordbahnhofviertel, Rosensteinpark and Schlossgarten and offers 85 hectares of space for future-oriented living and working in the heart of the city. The Rosenstein Quarter is to be developed into an urban and mixed district with a high diversity of uses, attractive public spaces and internationally renowned cultural offerings. In addition, the quarter is to be developed under climate-friendly aspects. In addition to the expansion of the parks, the guiding principle of the energy-plus quarter plays a major role: the future buildings should generate more energy than they consume.
Exhibition in the Glass Office
Currently, the designs of the winning office asp Architekten/Koeber Landschaftsarchitektur are also on display at the Info-Laden Rosenstein auf der Prag e.V.. The exhibition in the Gläsernes Büro at Nordbahnhofstraße 81 can be seen until October 12, always on Mondays and Wednesdays between 5 and 7 p.m., Saturdays from 10 a.m. to 12 p.m. and by appointment.
While the sound barrier of 100,000 installed fuel cells was already broken in Japan last year, numerous heating technology suppliers presented natural gas fuel cell heaters for the first time at the ISH in Frankfurt in March of this year, which are now to conquer German boiler rooms after decades of development and testing.
For the Badger InnoGen by SenerTec with a Japanese fuel cell from Toshiba and the Viessmann Vitovalor 300-P with a Panasonic fuel cell, a subsidy of around 7,600 euros awaits. In addition, Viessmann recently reduced the price of the Vitovalor 300-P to 19,500 euros, so that, taking into account the new subsidy, a complete fuel cell heating system with Japanese roots can be had for as little as 11,900 euros.
Dr. Kirsten David, a researcher at HafenCity University (HCU) Hamburg, has developed an innovative method for determining rent increases after energy efficiency measures: By means of functional cost splitting, rent increases become appropriate and comprehensible. The planning of the energetic measures is also ecologically optimized. For her dissertation entitled "Functional Cost Splitting for the Determination of Rent Increases after Energy Efficiency Measures", the scientist today receives the "BUND Research Award 2020". With the research award, the Bund für Umwelt- und Naturschutz (BUND) honors scientific work on sustainable development.
Rent increases due to energy-efficient building modernisation are legally permissible and politically desired as an investment incentive. After all, according to the German Energy Agency (dena), around 35% of Germany's total energy consumption is attributable to the building sector. An increase in the renovation rate is therefore necessary from a climate policy perspective.
However, while the legislators assume that such measures can be implemented economically and without affecting the rent, the experience of many tenants is different: Often the rent increases exceed the saved heating and energy costs many times over. In extreme cases, tenants can no longer afford their apartments. "To this day, energy-efficient building refurbishment has a reputation as a gentrification tool," says David. With the method she developed to determine appropriate rent increases, the 45-year-old scientist also wants to contribute to an increased social acceptance of corresponding measures.
"The basis of the politically expected increase amounts is the so-called coupling principle," explains the architect. "Like the Energy Saving Ordinance, it assumes that energy efficiency measures will always be implemented when a comprehensive refurbishment is due anyway. The sticking point: only the modernization costs entitle landlords* to rent increases, but not the costs for the renovation. The latter must be deducted from the total investment sum as "anyway costs". Eight percent of the remaining costs can be passed on to the tenants as a modernisation charge.
"The current regulation is insufficient. In practice, there are manifold demarcation problems between modernisation costs relevant to rent increases and maintenance costs not relevant to rent increases," says David. The method she developed, on the other hand, focuses on the climate-relevant improvement of each individual building component compared to its condition before the construction measure. "Functional cost splitting thus corresponds to the actual basic idea of the legislators, is practicable and enables an appropriate and comprehensible allocation to modernisation or refurbishment costs," says David.
According to the scientist, her approach leads to the omission of measures that are nonsensical from a structural engineering point of view and do not bring about any climate-relevant improvement of the building components: "With my method, such measures are not relevant for rent increases and are therefore uneconomical for landlords. In addition, your calculation method ensures that the modernization levy actually approaches the level of the ancillary cost savings as a rule. The award winner is therefore particularly pleased that the sustainability aspect of her work has been recognised with the BUND Research Award: "Rental housing stock can only be developed sustainably if ecological, economic and social aspects are given equal consideration. Functional cost splitting makes a significant contribution to this."
This year, the BUND Research Award will be presented at a virtual conference. Among other things, keynote speaker and environmental scientist Ernst Ulrich von Weizsäcker will discuss with the three award winners how science can develop more relevance and effectiveness for sustainability goals. The transfer into practice is also an important concern for David. Her next goal is to further develop functional cost splitting into an instrument that can also be understood by laypersons - preferably as an online tool.
Personal details:
Kirsten David is a guest researcher at HCU in the subject areas "Design and Analysis of Structures" with Prof. Dr.-Ing. Annette Bögle and "Construction Economics" with Prof. Dipl.-Ing. Reinhold Johrendt as well as a lecturer in the interdisciplinary study programmes. Her doctoral thesis was supervised by Prof. Dipl.-Ing. Reinhold Johrendt and Prof. Dr.-Ing. Thomas Krüger, (subject area "Project Management and Project Development in Urban Planning") and is freely available: https://edoc.sub.uni-hamburg.de//hcu/volltexte/2019/508/.
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The Ministry of Energy plans to increase the performance contribution for solar power plants up to 30 kilowatts in the coming year. This is intended to enable significantly more private roofs to be used for solar power generation in the future.
