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Roof insulation in a residential building
Photo: Sebastian Dorn / Westend61 / IMAGO
The Federal Office of Economics and Export Control (BAFA) has surprisingly suspended the funding programs for energy advice. This emerges from a letter that the authority sent to energy consultants and which SPIEGEL has received.
Accordingly, there is currently “a pause in approval” and there could be a “delay in payment.” However, all obligations already entered into through grant notifications would be fulfilled. “The applications submitted will now be processed in the order in which they were received,” writes Bafa.
The authority justifies the temporary suspension by saying that the Federal Ministry of Finance (BMF) only delivers funding from the Climate and Transformation Fund (KTF) on a staggered basis. The BMF recently announced that it wanted to use the available funds sparingly due to the strained budget situation. Cautious practice should ensure that we can still react to unforeseeable changes. “The federal government has therefore decided not to allocate all the funds to the managing bodies right at the beginning of the year,” said a spokeswoman.
The Bafa reports to the Green Economics Minister Robert Habeck, but receives the funds from the Ministry of Finance. There was initially no comment from the Federal Ministry of Economics.
The federal government is supporting energy consulting in 2024 with 240 million euros from the KTF. Applicants receive 80 percent of the eligible consulting fee, but a maximum of 1,300 to 1,700 euros, depending on the number of residential units.
The subsidies for new windows or insulation are not directly affected by the stop.
The industry is unnerved
“The renewed funding stop creates enormous uncertainty and delays renovation projects unnecessarily,” says Stefan Bolln, energy consultant and federal chairman of the GIH energy consultants’ association. He is extremely bothered by the fact that the federal government does not communicate in a unified manner about its funding programs. You now have to provide clarity as quickly as possible. »The construction industry urgently needs positive signals.«
This is not the first stop in the payment of funding for energy consultancies. At the beginning of December, due to the budget crisis, the federal government even stopped the entire program for renovation measures, including subsidies for new heating systems. The Federal Constitutional Court had previously declared the reallocation of 60 billion euros in Corona loans in the 2021 federal budget to be null and void.
Since January 1, 2024, only the KfW development bank has been responsible for promoting heating systems, i.e. heat pumps, biomass heating systems, solar thermal systems and hydrogen fuel cell heating systems. Bafa continues to promote efficiency measures in buildings such as new windows and insulation, as well as system technology such as ventilation systems, heating optimization measures such as hydraulic balancing and the individual renovation plan (iSFP), which helps homeowners plan the renovation step by step. However, an energy consultant is necessary to create the timetable.