Climate activist Luisa Neubauer has blasted the draft provisions of the revised Building Energy Act as totally inadequate. “The federal government seems to be evading the issue while it currently faces the Federal Constitutional Court because we are filing a lawsuit against its insufficient climate measures” Neubauer told the newspapers of the Funke Media Group (Thursday editions).
She argues that climate protection, which fails to distribute the burdens of the climate crisis and of climate‑mitigation measures fairly, could be constitutionally unlawful. Amid this legally sensitive mix, she likened the new law to “Markus Söder with a tofu sausage” – a joke underscoring her view that the government’s proposal does as little for real climate protection as that comparison suggests.
If the bill was intended by Greens’ Economy Minister Robert Habeck to be a strong push, Neubauer maintains it is at best a “heating horror”. She accuses the government, and in particular Economy Minister Katherina Reiche of the CDU, of promoting biogas without sufficient supply, calling it “energy policy based on fairy‑tale calculations”. The proposal supposedly promises lower consumer costs while meanwhile encouraging consumers to rely longer on fossil gas, which in practice becomes even more expensive.
“This policy traps people into costly situations – the Union knows this too” Neubauer warned. “How much does the CDU despise both climate and consumer protection, and how little does it consider its constitutional obligations, in order to present this plan to the public?” she added.
Neubauer said that the Economy Minister, Union parliamentary leader Jens Spahn, and others are now waging a “cultural war against everything sustainable” right in the public heating sector. “We all bear the costs; only the gas lobby benefits, which the plan now attributes to the climate goals and the certainty of the heat transition”. She concluded that if the SPD does not object, all others should do so.