The federal government has introduced relief for millions of tenants in the climate tax for residential buildings.

According to government representatives, the cabinet passed a draft law on Wednesday that would require landlords to contribute more to the costs of the carbon dioxide tax introduced in 2021.

This should apply from next year.

The participating Federal Ministry of Economics, the Federal Ministry of Building and the Federal Ministry of Justice said at noon that more would be done for climate protection in the heating sector and a socially just distribution of costs.

From 2023 onwards, landlords will bear 90 to zero percent of the costs.

The more energy-efficient your house is, the lower your share of the costs.

This should be an incentive to replace old heaters or windows.

The stage model covers over 13 million apartments.

In the case of commercial real estate, tenants and landlords should initially each bear half of the CO2 costs.

So far, tenants have shouldered the CO2 tax alone.

"The affected residential buildings currently incur carbon dioxide costs of an estimated one billion euros, which are borne entirely by the tenants," says the draft law.

The tenants’ association had put the CO2 costs for a model household in an unrenovated apartment at 130 euros for gas heating and 190 euros for oil heating in 2022.

Government sees “win-win situation”

“By sharing the CO2 costs, we have found a solution that is socially just and will also relieve tenants in the future.

The worse a building is insulated, the older the heating or the windows are, for example, the higher the CO2 costs for landlords and the greater the relief for tenants," said Economics and Climate Protection Minister Robert Habeck in a statement.

Tenants often suffer from high energy costs due to poor insulation and heating, but without being able to take countermeasures themselves, said the Greens politician.

Conversely, a landlord who has renovated the building in terms of energy efficiency can also pass on the costs.

Federal Building Minister Klara Geywitz (SPD) also put the "win-win situation" in the foreground.

“The tenants win because they don't heat for the outside environment.

The landlords win, because they save costs in the long term.” At the same time, Geywitz made it clear in her statement that the regulation that has now been made is only an interim solution.

They will therefore be evaluated for their effect and work will be done on using energy certificates as a basis for the model.

“Our goal is to have CO2-neutral heating by a certain point in time.

Until we achieve that, the carbon price will be distributed fairly.”

However, Federal Minister of Justice Marco Buschmann (FDP) emphasized that the legal framework must be right for this.

“The rules about the distribution of the carbon price have to be workable – and they have to provide the right incentives.

The phased model decided today corresponds to these targets,” said Buschmann in Berlin.

Delay of six months

In the coalition agreement, the SPD, Greens and FDP had announced that costs would be shared from July 2022.

In the coalition, the six-month delay was justified by the fact that the billing periods for heating costs usually start anew at the beginning of the year.

The previous government of Union and SPD had not been able to agree on a cost sharing.

In view of the drastically increased energy prices caused by the Ukraine war, the GdW central association of the housing industry called for the CO2 tax to be suspended for one year.

In view of the high energy prices, the levy could no longer achieve any significant steering effect.

The German Tenants' Association fundamentally welcomed the idea of ​​a step-by-step model for sharing the CO2 costs in the rental housing sector, but called for a fundamental revision and immediate exemption of tenants from the CO2 costs.

"Against the background of the expected back payment of ancillary costs in 2023, it is not plausible that the state wants to relieve low-income households through tax lump sums and other subsidies on the one hand, and on the other hand asks this group, which is particularly affected by the energy costs, to pay the CO2 price", commented Lukas Siebenkotten, President of the German Tenants' Association, on the agreement reached by the Federal Cabinet.

The consumer advocates consider the stage model presented by the traffic light government to be "prone to error".

They fear that the tenants will be left with the high follow-up costs.

Siebenkotten criticized: "The assumption that the price of CO2 on fossil fuels triggers impulses for energy renovation or investments only applies if landlords are sufficiently incentivized to do so.

It therefore makes no sense for tenants to participate in it - whether partially or fully"