German Green minister likened to Putin in row over heat pumps

A MINISTER has been compared to Vladimir Putin over his push to replace gas boilers with heat pumps in a row embroiling the German government.

The Green party, which controls the powerful new climate ministry in Olaf Scholz’s coalition government, is determined to drive through reform via a mixture of subsidies and banning old technologies.

Most controversially, the Greens announced plans this month to ban all new gas heating installations starting next year, a policy that will force homeowners to buy more expensive heat pumps.

The climate minister, Robert Habeck, insists his drastic measure is the only way Germany can meet its target of hitting net zero carbon emissions by 2045.

“To say that we want to reach carbon neutrality by 2045 but at the same time say ‘hey, you can still install gas heating’ – that is a lie,” Mr Habeck stated flatly this week. However, since the plan was leaked a fortnight ago, it has come under attack.

Wolfgang Kubicki, the deputy leader of junior coalition party the Free Democrats, went as far as to compare Mr Habeck to Putin, saying he was acting like “a führer who thinks he knows what is best for people”. While Mr

Kubicki later apologised for the comment, it illustrated the crumbling trust inside the government that has burst out into the open in recent weeks.

Economists have deplored the plan which they say is likely to cost billions. Trade associations have said there are not enough specialists to install all the heat pumps, and industry have said that there are not enough heat pumps to meet demand.

Conservatives have leapt on the row, which they say will harm people’s home-ownership aspirations.

Markus Söder, the Bavarian state leader, said the government “would rather we live in communist prefab houses than own our own home”.

Dirk Wiese, a senior figure inside Mr Scholz’s Social Democrats, sniped that the plans were evidence that the Greens “often only focus on the high earners in the big cities”.

The Free Democrats warned that the plan would “harm an insane number of people”.

The Greens, for their part, are increasingly frustrated by the Free Democrats, who have recently backtracked on a previous agreement to ban combustion engines by 2035.

The Free Democrats are also using their position in control of the finance ministry to threaten to withhold funding in next year’s budget.

‘The government would rather we live in communist prefab houses than own our own home’