Black-red wants to continue a red-green-red project and spend billions on it. There is already a 4 billion hole in the new house budget.
That won’t be enough to buy and convert Vattenfall’s district heating network. The Senate wants to do this with loans Photo: dpa
Some things just leave you speechless. Just last week, the House of Representatives approved a double budget for 2024 and 2025 with more question marks than ever before. Four billion euros still need to be saved somehow – “somehow” because the draft budget avoided clearly defining what and where.
Just a week later, the leading figures in the same black-red Senate appear in front of the press and celebrate their decision to buy the district heating network from the Swedish energy company Vattenfall – for around 1.6 billion euros, including billions in subsequent investments. The official decision on this should be made by the House of Representatives in the spring.
It doesn’t add up, does it? The necessary money should be raised in 2024 via a supplementary budget and borrowing. Loans? What about the debt brake that prohibits such loans? And in any case, this will apply until it is reformed, which is something not only the SPD and the Greens, but also Berlin’s Prime Minister Kai Wegner (CDU) are pushing for.
With an exception it should be possible to bypass the brake. In this case it is called a “financial transaction”: Because the issue is offset by an asset – the district heating network, the largest in Western Europe, is owned by the state – this should be possible with loans.
Access to the special climate fund is questionable
But the purchase alone isn’t enough. Even if Senator for Economic Affairs Franziska Giffey (SPD) made it sound on Tuesday as if they were rescuing and freeing what had previously been stolen or kidnapped – “We are bringing the heat home”: District heating customers were not badly served by the previous network operator Vattenfall. Emphasizing future security of supply and independence sounds strange: after all, Vattenfall is not a Russian or Chinese company, but rather at home in the EU heartland of Sweden.
Beyond the basic ideological belief that public services are in the hands of the state, such a purchase only makes sense because it gives the state of Berlin direct access to a conversion towards the desired climate neutrality by 2045 at the latest. According to estimates that have been heard several times, this renovation will cost billions – billions that Berlin doesn’t even have. It is also not certain whether they can come from a future, yet far from certain, special climate fund.
The Court of Auditors at least made it clear in November that, in its view, such assets should not be used to finance projects that have long been planned and launched. And the then red-green-red Senate had already announced the desired purchase as possible at the end of January of this year, at that time still under the leadership of the current Senator for Economic Affairs, Giffey.
The leading business association UVB is therefore absolutely right when it states: “Berlin is taking on an enormous financial risk by taking over the heating network.” The only question is: Would there be an alternative?
At least suboptimal announcement timing
If the state didn’t take over the network, a private company that wasn’t at all interested in ecological conversion might do it. That’s why the Senate was naturally under pressure to act to take advantage of Vattenfall’s willingness to sell. It’s just that, to put it politely, the matter doesn’t seem to be on the most secure footing.
The timing of the takeover announcement is also at least suboptimal: it will be difficult to convey to any social institution in the city if indispensable tens or hundreds of thousands of euros are to be cut in the future, but at the same time the Senate is celebrating an investment worth billions.
If you think that such a point of view compares apples with oranges, the best thing you can do is bring them to a youth club or the seniors’ meeting place around the corner. They should be happy about both because they may no longer be able to pay for them themselves in the future.
2023-12-23 10:09:22
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