KfW BEG funding stopped 261, 262, 263, 264, 461, 463, 464

And yes, I’m once again riding my old building enthusiast horse – in the argument that a renovation is not economical, what is generally ignored so far is how much gray energy and resources are saved when renovating. And we cannot afford that in our extremely densely populated country, which produces most of its goods at the expense of other countries (especially in raw material procurement).

The problem is also that in renovation, the high standards are often very difficult and labor-intensive to achieve. The mentioned house from '38 cannot simply be renovated to EH55 with a heat pump; effectively, you are rebuilding half the house. I think the goal of achieving the highest possible savings simply works against itself here. For many existing buildings, a renovation to EH100 would be more than sufficient.

Therefore, a sensible promotion of individual measures would be a good approach. It cannot be that Patrizia and similar companies avoid the simplest renovations when it suits them and at the same time point to social compatibility. As long as such companies can pass on energy renovations to tenants, this is a tool that only benefits the investors.

The critical question is of course whether the standard would really be a standard without the subsidy, in other words whether the subsidy really creates incentives.

That is the question I am also asking myself. For that, I am opening a new thread with a poll, because it is really interesting.

... and the state should relieve burdens elsewhere. Less bureaucracy, fewer expensive and often moderately sensible regulations. Lower fees at the notary, for example... what the 15-minute process for entering a land charge costs is absolutely crazy...

Regarding this, yes, except for the fees, which I do not find particularly high. I just looked them up again for this answer (please excuse the formatting, I can't get it better quickly from my Excel table):

Grunderwerbsteuer 5,162.50 €

Notarkosten 1,335.66 € Entry of land charge in the land register 347.00 €

The logic behind the "wrong incentive" is that the EH55 standard is already practically the norm and it makes little sense to promote a standard that is already implemented by the majority. If people are already building EH55 anyway, then it’s just a free ride effect that doesn’t lead to any improvement. The critical question, of course, is whether the standard would really be the norm without the subsidy, in other words, whether the subsidy really creates incentives. Our general contractor said "today people basically don’t build below 55 anymore," but we also had, for example, an offer from Town & Country. The upgrade to EH55 with the subsidy would have been virtually cost-neutral, and without the subsidy, we wouldn’t have done it there.

You’re giving the answer yourself. We only build to KfW55 standard because we are contractually obligated. Those who were not obligated decide in favor of it only because of the cheaper loan, the grace year without repayment, and of course the repayment grant. A bit more heating cost savings alone is not enough of an incentive. To now reinterpret it as if builders nowadays choose the KfW standard anyway and voluntarily spend money on the climate even without perks, is like believing that you can fish just as well without bait.

I’m very curious how the municipal and city councils will now react, which have imposed or planned to impose the KfW standard on the buyers of land in their new development areas.

I am interested in why these are false incentives. (No provocation.) A KfW 55 house is better than a building energy law house, so the subsidy achieves its goal, or am I wrong? A KfW 40 house or passive house is, of course, even better, but small steps are, in my opinion, also important. Or is KfW 55, from your point of view, not even a small step in terms of environmental protection? I do not want to question your assessment of "false incentives," but I would like to understand it.

If these subsidy programs are supposed to serve climate protection, the false incentive lies in the massive imbalance of 24,200 new build subsidies versus only 700 renovations. Our new building would have, according to the building energy law (or energy saving ordinance), a final energy consumption of about 32 kWh/sqm per year. With KfW55 it would be about 26, and with KfW40 then 19 kWh/sqm. For both the climate and the running costs, these differences are quite irrelevant, as they are absolutely very, very low in every variant. However, for a relatively small effect of only 6 or 13 kWh/sqm, there were relatively high subsidies (about 30-50K€).

If you renovate an old building from 200 kWh/sqm to 100 kWh/sqm with this subsidy amount (which is not particularly demanding), you save 100/13 = 7.7 times as much energy or CO2 compared to the subsidy from building energy law to KfW40.

In the current implementation, the construction industry—and, of course, also the builders—were actually subsidized rather than climate protection.

I just read these numbers in the press:

"According to the ministry, 24,000 submitted but not yet decided applications are now in limbo. Of these, 20,200 are new buildings according to the Efficiency Standard 55, 3,000 new buildings according to the even more efficient Standard 40, and 700 renovations. In the latter two groups, funding is expected to resume shortly under changed conditions. For applicants of an Efficiency House 55, there will only be loans instead of grants."

Funding applications for 700 renovations vs. 24,200 new buildings (of which only 3,000 are KfW40) clearly show the wrong incentives from a climate policy perspective. The same article also mentioned that the BMF approved an additional 6.6 billion euros at the beginning of January – even those funds have already been spent.

If these numbers are correct, the applications will certainly be approved afterward. We are talking about around 800 million euros in funding, provided all are still approved. That doesn’t change the overall situation much and one can have a clean conclusion without resentment.

I can well imagine that the BMWK will still manage to come to a decision on this. Hopefully...