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Apartment blocks in Berlin (symbol picture)
Photo: Lukas Schulze / picture alliance / dpa
Since the beginning of the year, the CO₂ tax has made heating and hot water more expensive in households.
Since then, a ton of carbon dioxide has cost 25 euros, a liter of heating oil costs around eight cents more, and a kilowatt hour of natural gas around 0.6 cents.
This price will gradually rise in the coming years - and so will the additional costs for private households.
Whoever lives to rent has so far paid these additional costs in full.
However, tenants have only limited influence on their own energy consumption: they can turn down the heating or try to reduce hot water consumption.
However, you cannot decide whether the apartment will be equipped with modern and economical heating or whether it will be better insulated.
Only the landlord can do that.
Actually, after a long struggle and under pressure from the SPD, the outgoing federal government had agreed to split the additional costs of the CO₂ price half between landlords and tenants.
But the compromise between the Union and SPD-led ministries ultimately failed shortly before the election due to the resistance of the Union faction.
Examples of relief effects
But now some federal states with environmental ministries led by the SPD and the Greens are putting pressure on the landlords to participate in the CO₂ price in future - while the two parties are negotiating with the FDP about the formation of a new federal government.
But how much would that actually bring tenants?
The Federal Environment Ministry had the effect calculated for various model households at the beginning of the year.
The additional costs for the fuel price as well as the relief from the lowering of the EEG surcharge, which also took place at the beginning of the year, were also included:
The calculations, which of course are to be understood as exemplary approximate values, make it clear: The assumption of half of the additional costs by the landlord would have a smaller effect than the reduction of the EEG surcharge at the current level of the fee. However, the CO₂ price will rise annually and in 2025 will be 55 euros per ton - more than twice as high as it is now. Accordingly, the relief of the tenants would also increase by sharing the additional costs.
In addition, amounts between 24 and 48 euros per year may hardly be noticeable for normal and high earners - but certainly for people with very low incomes.
And low-income households in particular are particularly hard hit by the CO₂ tax.
The poorest 30 percent of households live more often than average in apartments without thermal insulation or well-insulated windows.
A DIW study from 2019 makes this clear:
The half division between landlords and tenants should not only ensure more social justice, but also contribute to the fact that the fee for rented apartments unfolds its most important incentive effect: landlords, who can save costs as a result, may decide to replace one Heating or energetic renovation.
However, this could in turn lead to considerable burdens on the tenants, which are likely to be significantly higher than the relief from the distribution of the additional costs.
Because according to the current legal situation, landlords can add eight percent of the modernization costs to the basic rent every year - for an unlimited period of time.
Tenants' association and landlord representatives with alternative approaches
The tenants' association is therefore calling for the additional costs of the CO₂ levy to be split in half on the one hand, and changes to the system for allocating modernization costs on the other. "Instead, we need an orientation based on the rent," says Lukas Siebenkotten from the German Tenants' Association. "The cold rent may rise to the same extent as the additional costs decrease as a result of the energetic modernization measures." In addition, the state subsidies for energetic refurbishments would have to be increased.
Many landlord associations are critical of the 50-50 rule for the CO₂ tax - after all, landlords have no influence on the behavior of tenants. However, the umbrella association of the housing industry, GdW, also admits that the current regulation is imbalanced. "The CO₂ costs must be divided fairly between the tenant and landlord," says GdW President Axel Gedaschko.
However, Gedaschko suggests a different system: Whoever pays the additional costs should be based on how energy efficient the building is.
If a landlord has already invested a lot in energy efficiency and has thus reduced consumption to a low level, the tenant has to bear the additional costs because he is the only one who can still influence consumption.
"Conversely, in unrenovated buildings with high energy consumption, the owner must largely bear the costs," says Gedaschko.
fdi / hej
