Germans are criticizing a government plan to ban oil and gas boilers and replace them with heat pumps, arguing it is happening too fast and is going to cost a lot of money.
Germany wants to become net-zero by 2045. To this end, the government recently announced it would ban boilers working with fossil fuels, effectively forcing people to switch to heat pumps as the only green enough option for people with no access to district heating.
The cost of the ban is estimated at over 9 billion euros, or $10 billion, annually until 2028. After that, according to the Scholz government, costs will drop by almost half thanks to a ramp-up in heat pump production and a scale-up of wind and solar capacity.
The government is offering financial help to households, to the tune of 30% of the cost of the switch but Germans appear to not be particularly enticed by that offer.
“People are outraged and furious,” Petra Uertz of the Residential Property Association told the Financial Times. “They can’t understand why it has to happen so quickly.”