Greens doubt the sense of the alliance for affordable housing
Published
Has Federal Building Minister Barbara Hendricks (SPD) raised expectations with the Alliance for Affordable Housing and Building that ultimately cannot be fulfilled? The Bündnis 90/ Die Grünen parliamentary group in the Bundestag is investigating her doubts about the meaningfulness and effectiveness of the alliance in a question. And they want to know: How and when will the alliance be continued?
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.
Conceptual procedures are increasingly establishing themselves as a further instrument of municipal land policy for locations with development potential. Here, the property is not allocated according to the highest price, but according to the concept that promises the most sustainable approaches to the further development of the neighbourhood. In this way, the procedures offer municipalities approaches to solving two current and urgent problems: the need for high-quality urban development and affordable housing.
The publication on the General Departmental Research project "Baukultur für das Quartier. Process culture through concept awarding" examined the question of the extent to which building culture in the neighbourhood can be influenced and improved through concept procedures in a broader sense. On the basis of eleven best-practice examples, the spectrum of concept awarding as part of municipal real estate policy was examined: Which procedures are suitable for achieving building culture objectives? Which framework conditions were successful? Which variants and approaches are available? As a result, recommendations for action have emerged that show how concept procedures can lead to a high level of building culture quality, for example through low entry thresholds, appraisal by an expert committee and quality assurance. The publication offers the first nationwide overview of this procedure, which is still largely unused, and provides important information on how building culture, affordable housing and qualitative urban development can go hand in hand.
The Federal Cabinet today approved an update of the Resource Efficiency Programme. Germanwatch welcomes in principle the government's plan for resource efficiency, but says that the original draft of the Environment Ministry has been weakened considerably, especially with regard to human rights issues. "In many places we now only find lip service instead of a binding framework," regrets Cornelia Heydenreich, Team Leader Corporate Responsibility at Germanwatch. She emphasises: "Resource protection must go hand in hand with human rights protection".
In the September draft it had still said: "In all funding instruments of the raw materials strategy, state funding will be linked to binding compliance with the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights [...]". Heydenreich: "That is the level of ambition we would have needed." Now it just says that eligibility for funding will be "assessed" in terms of human rights. The Resource Efficiency Programme merely refers to the parallel process of drafting a "National Action Plan on Business and Human Rights", which is to be brought to the Federal Cabinet in May. "Now it is up to the federal government to present such an ambitious National Action Plan in May, as promised. This must include, in particular, a law on human rights due diligence", demands Heydenreich.
Hardly any effective measures to prolong the use of products
Even in the measures to promote longer use of products, the federal government has taken promising approaches such as the creation of the EU legal prerequisite for a VAT concession in favour of resource-saving goods and services (e.g. repairs) out of its plan again. "The federal government's measures are too timid to really push for longer use of appliances," Heydenreich criticises.
On the other hand, it is to be welcomed that the German government is clearly committed to a demanding implementation of the EU regulation on conflict minerals. Heydenreich: "We call on the German government to use all possibilities to create a workable basis for this at EU level in the coming weeks. It must not be left to the companies to decide whether or not they finance bloody conflicts in the mining regions." Since the beginning of February, the EU Commission, the EU Parliament and the EU states have been negotiating a regulation on conflict minerals.
The extractive sector repeatedly causes particularly extensive human rights violations such as forced relocations, violent repression or even labour rights violations, including accidental deaths. According to a study commissioned by the former UN Special Representative on Business and Human Rights, John Ruggie, most of the business-related human rights allegations (28 per cent) concerned the extraction of raw materials.
The Institute for Solar Energy Research (ISFH) has presented a free tool for the individual design and holistic evaluation of tenant electricity concepts.
These offer tenants in apartment blocks the opportunity to benefit from low-cost renewable electricity generated on site. However, profitability depends on many factors, which is why tenant electricity providers can hardly assess whether an investment is worthwhile without assistance. The new calculation tool is designed to solve this problem.
Programme based on Excel
The programme, which is implemented in Microsoft Excel, is based on a model that can be used to compare multivalent supply solutions. In addition to PV systems, small wind turbines and battery storage systems - previously excluded from tenant electricity subsidies - as well as combined heat and power supplies with combined heat and power plants, heat pumps or gas boilers can also be analysed.
The ecological assessment is based on the annual CO2 emissions avoided in the building, which is partly supplied with renewable energy, compared to a conventionally supplied reference building.
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The Institute for Solar Energy Research (ISFH) has presented a free tool for the individual design and holistic evaluation of tenant electricity concepts.
