Municipalities, public utilities and the housing industry in Saxony are calling for improvements to municipal heat planning and the introduction of new heating standards. More time and money are needed for implementation, said the deputy managing director of the Saxon Association of Cities and Municipalities (SSG), Ralf Leimkuhler, on Thursday in Dresden.
The municipalities fear bottlenecks: If almost 11,000 cities and municipalities nationwide commission heat planning, the association believes this will overload planning capacities and drive up prices. The SSG also demanded cost compensation for the new task.
“There isn’t enough money either way,” Leim Kühler predicted. The federal government would make around 500 million euros available. According to calculations by the Saxon Energy Agency, heat planning for Saxony alone costs between 40 and 100 million euros.
According to the federal government’s plans, municipal heating planning should become an important component in the transition to CO2-free heating. In the future, municipalities will have to indicate in which streets and areas they plan to supply district heating. House and apartment owners should also find out whether they need to install another heating system themselves, such as a heat pump.
If there are no heat plans yet, cities with more than 100,000 inhabitants should have until mid-2026 to develop their heat plans, according to the draft heat planning law. All other municipalities should submit them by the end of June 2028. Smaller communities with fewer than 10,000 inhabitants should be able to carry out a simplified heat planning process.
Preparations are already underway in Saxony: a heat plan is currently being drawn up in ten municipalities, including Dresden, Leipzig, Pirna, Oschatz and Reichenbach. According to SSG, around 28.4 percent of households in Saxony are currently supplied with district heating. Experts assume that the share of district heating will increase significantly in the future.
After planning, the actual task comes – implementation, said Leimkuehler. “This will turn cities into construction sites for years and decades.”
“Apartments must be heated and supplied with hot water,” said Mirjam Philipp from the Association of Saxon Housing Cooperatives. The aim must be to protect tenants from excessive burdens. The Association of the Housing and Real Estate Industry also warned that the social aspect should not be ignored when planning heat. Alexander Müller, spokesman for vdw Sachsen, warned of extremely varying costs if there are two different heat supplies on two sides of a street.
The Bundestag recently passed the heating law that had been discussed for months. It is likely that it will pass the state chamber at the end of September. The Heating Act and the Heat Planning Act are linked and are due to come into force on January 1, 2024.
2023-09-29 02:02:59
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