Energy Crisis: Lowering Water Temperature – Co-ops Rule Out Nothing

Created: 07/10/2022 13:31

By: Bjarne Kommnick

The first housing cooperatives restrict the heating of tenants.

Many other companies could follow suit.

Hanover – The energy crisis is affecting consumers, there is a general call to save energy in Germany, prices for electricity and gas are exploding.

The first housing cooperatives have already announced that they will reduce the hot water supply in rental properties.

The real estate group Vonovia, for example, therefore restricts its gas central heating from 11 p.m. to 6 a.m.

What is the situation in Lower Saxony and Bremen, will tenants soon have to adjust to cold apartments?

First housing companies throttle heating: "Nothing is excluded"

According to a dpa survey, this is not the case for a large majority of housing cooperatives in Lower Saxony and Bremen.

For the most part, there are still no concrete plans to throttle the heating for tenants.

However, "nothing can be ruled out for the future," says Carsten Ens, spokesman for the Association for Housing and Real Estate (vdw) in Lower Saxony and Bremen.

The association includes a total of 180 housing cooperatives and housing associations with over 400,000 apartments.

This is reported by kreiszeitung.de.

The first housing cooperatives have already announced that they will reduce heating in rental properties.

© dpa/Hauke-Christian Dittrich

The housing cooperative in Lüneburg, on the other hand, has already announced that it wants to lower the water temperatures in the rental properties.

"It is an inevitability," explains CEO Ulf Reinhardt to the dpa.

A total of around 1,360 apartments in the Lüneburg area are affected.

A housing cooperative in Dippoldiswalde, Saxony, is currently even completely turning off the hot water for tenants at night.

Federal Building Minister Klara Geywitz from the SPD then described the measure as "illegal".

Saving energy: It is technically not possible to throttle the heating in Gewoba apartments

But in some cases such interventions are not only prohibited, in some places it is not technically possible to access the heating systems, as Christine Dose, spokeswoman for Gewoba, explained.

Gewoba owns 42,400 apartments in Bremen, Oldenburg and Bremerhaven, so these properties appear to be virtually immune to a reduction in hot water supply.

Especially at the beginning of the next heating season, several cooperatives would consider turning down the heating in winter.

On the other hand, what all the companies surveyed have in common is that advance payments for operating costs have already been increased across the board or that there are concrete plans.

The German Tenants' Association recommends saving electricity: "Otherwise it will be quite bitter"

The German Tenants' Association of Lower Saxony-Bremen is now urgently appealing to consumers to save energy: "Otherwise it will be quite bitter in the next utility bill," said the association's legal officer Reinold von Thadden.

In addition, von Thadden would recommend building up financial reserves in order to be able to settle additional payments if necessary.

In some cases, bills for electricity and gas prices are tripled.

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How concrete the energy problem is is not only evident in the rental apartments, but also at the highest political level.

The Bundestag has already announced that the rooms should be heated less in winter and cooled less in summer.

The Lower Saxony state parliament is also currently considering how energy can best be saved.

A catalog of measures is currently being coordinated.

Lower Saxony's ministries also want to save energy

Lower Saxony's Prime Minister, Stephan Weil, who recently called for another relief package due to the exploding energy prices, explained to

: "In the state's buildings, we will probably lower the temperatures by a lot.

And if the energy supply should become even tighter, the state will also have to set a good example.

We will then have to consider what further restrictions are possible in office buildings, including closures".

The Prime Minister warns that the energy crisis is a "social crisis".

In concrete terms, this means, for example, that the Ministry of Economics would optimize the heating system operated with district heating and would replace ceiling lights with LED lights in the Ministry.

The Ministry of Agriculture also announced that it wanted to keep the temperature low on its own.

From now on, the Bundestag will only be heated to 22 instead of 20 degrees in winter, while in summer it should remain around two degrees warmer than before.