The market town of Holzkirchen builds the Efficiency House 40 even without KfW funding

Created: 02/14/2022, 06:00

The middle school in Holzkirchen on Baumgartenstrasse is demolished.

A new building will be built in the same place.

© Thomas Plettenberg

Holzkirchen had expected a total of three and a half million euros in KfW funding for the construction of the building yard and the middle school.

But nothing will come of it: the federal government has stopped the funding program.

Holzkirchen –

In January, the Holzkirchen municipal council decided to build the new building yard according to the specifications for an efficiency house 40.

The new middle school should also meet this standard.

A building that consumes 60 percent less energy than a house that complies with the minimum statutory energy requirements is considered an efficiency house 40.

The Kreditanstalt für Wiederaufbau (KfW) sets the standard – and supports these buildings.

But federal politics got in the way: The funding program for energy houses ended at the end of January.

According to information from the Federal Ministries of Economics, Housing and Finance, only applications submitted by January 23, 2022 are currently being processed.

According to statements made in January by municipal treasurer Dominik Wendlinger, the building yard would incur additional costs of 140,000 euros if the new building were to be built as an efficiency house 40.

This would be offset by an increase in KfW funding of 715,000 euros.

According to Stefan Schedl (Institute for Energy Technology Amberg), secondary school would have resulted in additional funding of a good 2.8 million euros (we reported).

But according to the current status, this is history for now.

At the most recent meeting, the federal political developments led to inquiries from the municipal parliamentary groups of the CSU and FWG about how to proceed.

Mayor Christoph Schmid (CSU) admitted that the suspension of Standard 40 "surprised us".

This also affects private builders, who are now going to the minimum legal standard.

"And that can't be in the interests of the government, which is committed to climate protection," said Schmid.

He expects that a decision will be made at federal level in the next few weeks on how to proceed with the funding programs.

"We have therefore decided to stick with the Efficiency House 40," says Schmid.

In addition, rescheduling at the building yard means increased costs and time delays.

Nothing would change in the construction costs anyway, even if the funding program were not continued, according to Schmid.

In this case, one would only have to replan the structure of the financing.

He believes that sticking to the Efficiency House 40 is justified: "We don't build energy-efficiently because of the subsidy, but because of the environment".

By Andreas Wolkenstein

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