Marc Bernhard, May 21, 2026, Heating Law and CDU

German Bundestag, May 21, 2026, Plenarprotokoll 2/80, pp. 9558-9560. 

Frau President. Ladies and gentlemen. 

Hurrah, the heating law will be abolished, and everyone can again install what he wants – that is the fairy tale which you of the Federal government want to tell us. Your proposal of a so-called modernization law [Gebäudemodernisierungsgesetzes] is nothing other than Habeck’s heating hammer through the backdoor. 

With your Biotreppe [Bio-stair] you obligate the people to operate new construction oil and gas heating with initially 10 percent, later 60 percent bio-gas or bio-oil. Ja, where then shall all the bio-gas and bio-oil at all come from? According to your own statements, you yourselves do not know. The green energy minister from Baden-Württemberg confirms that initially there is not enough of this bio-manure. 

You also do not know what this madness will cost, yet proceed on, according to your own testimony, it will be so expensive that, practically, the people will simply no longer be able to afford operating an oil or gas heating. The people thereby remain – 

     Vice-president Andrea Lindholz: Herr colleague, there is a wish for an interim                         question from the Union delegation. Do you want to permit it? 

Gladly. 

     Vice-president Andrea Lindholz: Herr colleague Koller, please.

    Hans Koller (CDU/CSU): Many thanks, Herr colleague, that you have permitted the interim question.     You indeed have said we ourselves did not know where all the bio-manure shall come from. Have you     actually, really spoken with the branch? In this week, the bio-gas council came together, the bio-gas         technical associations met and on all sides is clearly confirmed: We have this potential. We have here     structures, and we can also service this. Do you not want to know, or does this not suit your ideology? 

You should perhaps preferably know your government better. I have put precisely this question to State Secretary Bartel yesterday in the Building Committee. I put to him the question: Where will all of this bio-manure come from? And he then correspondingly said to me: That, we do not know. 

    Klaus Wiener (CDU/CSU): The branch! Perhaps not him, but the branch! 

In the summer there will be a commission which will be occupied with this theme. This is completely irresponsible, what you are doing here. You introduce a bio-stair, and do not know where all the fuel shall come from. That is the reality.

And the green Energy Minister in Baden-Württemberg has exactly confirmed it: This bio-manure is not on the market. You coax the people and introduce some kind of stairway into nothing. You will not thereby come to grips. Stop lying to the people! 

         Hans Koller (CDU/CSU): I’ld recommend that to you!

Finally make reasonable Politik for the people out there, that they then can again pay their heating costs! 

There is besides: You do not know what this madness will cost, yet thence end in the people will no longer have sufficient money to operate this heating. Thereby remains for the people only the warm pump or distance heating, exactly so as with Habeck. 

Not only Habeck’s heating hammer remains practically in force, you worsen the situation for not already today installed oil and gas heating to the point of inability to pay; namely, through the certificate trade in 2028, decided in common by you, CDU/CSU, SPD and Greens, already in the German Bundestag. That is in fact in one and a half years. All experts thence proceed on that the CO₂ tax will thus at least be quadrupled to quintupled. 

            Andreas Lenz (CDU/CSU): Rubbish! AfD experts council, apparently! 

            Lisa Badum (Greens): You have the source of the numbers? Nonsense!

In regards gas heating, that leads to a price increase of around 60 percent – just by the CO₂ tax. And in regards heating oil, we are speaking of a costs explosion of around 100 percent. Here, the CO₂ tax portion will climb from the present 21 cents to then almost 1 euro per litre of heating oil. 

            Andreas Lenz (CDU/CSU): That’s just not right!

That means added yearly costs of around 1,200 euros for gas and 1,800 euros for oil. 

That is to say: You are worse than Habeck, who simply verboten the people from newly installing oil and gas heating, while you act as if you would leave to the people themselves the free choice to decide which heating they install. At the same time you, however, make oil and gas so expensive that no one can afford it as well, thereby drive the people in fact to the warm pump and thereby force them to expend 100,000 to 150,000 euros for the installation and the necessary reconstruction and insulation measures. Most of all owners and landlords will simply not be able to pay that, and thereby they will have no other choice than either to need to sell their dwelling at far under value, or again install a gas or oil heating. 

Because you quite precisely know that many renters can no longer pay the heating costs on account of your CO₂ cascade of increases, you now want to defend the renters from your own Politik in which you leave it to the landlord to pay. The landlord in the future shall pay 50 percent of the CO₂ tax of their renters, even though they have no influence on the heating consumption. This is nothing other than a bad, immoral contract at the cost of a third  party. 

And is thereby long since fully clear that the heating hammer is fully ineffective, absolutely ineffective. Since the optimistic accounting of the former Habeck ministry itself proceeds on a yearly savings of just one, single percent of the entire German CO₂ emissions, thus the CO₂ quantity which China blasts into the air in just five hours. And, for that, you destroy the savings,  the old age provision and the prosperity of the people in our country. How insane are you, actually? Had you simply let just the last three nuclear power plants continue to run, we would each year save double as much CO₂ as through your entire heating hammer. 

Heating law becomes modernization law. Raider is now called Twix, but changes nix! 

            Lisa Badum (Greens): Children’s talk by the AfD!

  

[trans: tem]

 

Marc Bernhard, April 23, 2026, Local Veto of Asylum Housing

German Bundestag, Plenarprotokoll 21/74, p. 8825. 

Frau President. Ladies and gentlemen. 

The situation in the cities and communities in Germany is catastrophic: Ever more budget freezes, ever less money for the the most necessary obligatory duties. Swimming pools, gymnasiums, day-cares and entire school buildings cannot be renovated. Streets, walkways, landscaping, the entire public space and infrastructure increasingly decays. 

The present deficit of the local governments amounts to 60 billion euros and will climb by 2028 to over 100 billion euros. The principal origin of this disaster is, according to the central association of the local governments, the explosion of the sozial costs. 

In this dramatic situation, the housing emergency ever further intensifies. Many people no longer find affordable housing. Young people cannot start new families; young families need to remain in their much too small dwellings. In big cities, often hundreds of those seeking housing stand in waiting lines. Despite this, you ever further intensify the housing crisis. 

For normal people, there is no more housing, certainly not for the low-income whom you ostensibly have at heart. You prolong the rent price brake, and empower your colleagues in the States to designate vast areas with strained housing markets. You thereby confirm that in Germany a vast housing emergency prevails. 

And even though you quite precisely know this, you nevertheless continue to carry out large, forced allocations of refugees in areas with a housing emergency and thereby quite knowingly intensify the domestic population’s housing emergency ever further. What you are doing, namely  playing off the domestic population against the refugees, 

            Clara Bünger (Linke): That, you do! 

            Caren Lay (Linke): That, you do!

is nothing other than asozial. Before I let anyone in, I need to first examine whether I have room enough, 

            Ina Latendorf (Linke): You’ve never had a relation to the constitution!

and whether in fact sufficient room is at hand, the local people know best of all. There thus needs be in the future a veto right of the communities against such forced allocations when already there prevails a housing emergency, dear friends. 

            Ina Latendorf (Linke): You well know that the numbers have receded, ne?

Since it makes no sense to let in ever more people somewhere where thousands of families no more find housing. That is asozial. 

            Clara Bünger (Linke): There are local governments which voluntarily accept!

Your forced allocations of refugees throw communities, already on the brink of bankruptcy, completely into financial ruin, and thereby into inability to act. Two-thirds, in many Federal States even three-quarters, of Bürgergeld recipients have a migration background. 

Housing for the Bürgergeld recipients alone costs the communities every year 11 billion euros out of their own pocket. In Berlin, just the sheltering of refugees costs 1 billion euros – money which is lacking for the most important problems: Renovation of schools and day-care, repair of streets, bridges and city clinics. 

The social costs of the local governments since 2015 have climbed from 54 billion euros to over 85 billion euros. The exploding social costs in the cities and communities becomes clear to everyone: One can have a sozial state. One can also have open borders. But both together leads unavoidably to the collapse of the sozial system. 

We experience precisely that directly in Germany. Who overburdens the local governments, endangers the social peace. Recover consciousness, and finally pull the emergency brake [Drucksache 21/5476]! 

 

[trans: tem]

Marc Bernhard, December 6, 2024, Heating Law

German Bundestag, Plenarprotokoll 20/204, pp. 26450-26451. 

Frau President. Ladies and gentlemen. 

Last year, the Ampel, against every sense and reason, come hell or high water, flogged the heating law through the Bundestag, without regard to loss, and thereby practically banned the new installation of oil and gas heating. 

Konrad Stockmeier (FDP): Wrong!

30 million households, thus around 64 million people, heat with oil and gas. That means that 75 percent of the people in Germany are directly affected by your heating hammer, and regardless whether owner or renter. Yet it was already clear prior to the passage that for many it will be unaffordable, that it destroys the old age provision of many millions of people, and is nothing other than a cold expropriation. Your heating hammer makes the costs of dwellings and heating unaffordable for many people. 

It was previously also fully clear that your heating hammer is absolutely ineffective; since even the most optimistic estimates of Habeck’s ministry proceed on a yearly savings of just one, single percent of the total German CO₂ emissions – thus, the CO₂ quantity which China blows into the air in just five hours. And for that, you destroy the savings, the old age provision and the prosperity of the people in our country? How crazy are you, actually? 

            Stephan Brandner (AfD): That is a rhetorical question!

Had you simply done nothing, but simply just let the last three nuclear power plants continue to run, 

            Bernhard Herrmann (Greens): Ach, you heat with atomic power, or what?                            Nonsense!

we would each year – just listen for once – save 15 million tons of CO₂, thus double as much as by your entire heating hammer. 

Even Construction Minister Geywitz has practically confirmed here in a questioning in the Bundestag that, with the heating hammer, what demonstrably works was forbidden, without really knowing, without having any functioning plan, as to how the people instead should heat in the future. 

Almost every second municipal utility considers an affordable heating supply no longer secure on account of your heating hammer. The city of Leipzig ascertained that the implementation of the heating hammer for Leipzig alone costs 30 billion euros. 

            Karsten Hilse (AfD): It’s only money!

That is 45,000 euros from infants to old men. No one can pay for this madness. 

Mannheim in 2035 as the first city in Germany completely disconnects people from the gas network. And thus happens exactly what I had said many times last year in the Bundestag: On account of your heating law, people now need to tear out new heating in the most brief time because it does not suit their city’s heating plan. 

Yet the crowning is that you of the FDP, then still in the government, yourselves had reckoned, before passage of the heating law, that the heating hammer will cost the people the unimaginable sum of 2,500 billion euros, and despite that, you in common with red-green, against better judgment, against every reason, simply forced through this law. 

And now? After the Chancellor showed you the door, you suddenly want to know nothing more at all of this. You, like the Chancellor, can remember nothing more, simply assert the opposite, and apparently want to rescind the law which you yourselves introduced. Thus, how credible your turnaround actually is, you can here and now give evidence by you voting for our motion [Drucksache 14031]. 

The same applies to you of the CDU. In all media, you announce that you want to rescind the heating law – exactly as Jens Spahn a couple of minutes ago here in the Bundestag confirmed – thus exactly what we today propose. 

If you of the CDU and the FDP thus really meant it seriously, then we would have for this today a majority. Yet you know quite precisely that with the reds and greens with whom you want to form a coalition in the future, there will never be a revocation. Thus show whether you mean it seriously, 

            Vice-president Katrin Göring-Eckardt: Many thanks.

or whether you are only once again lying to the people out there.

[trans: tem]

 

 

Marc Bernhard, May 24, 2023, Heating Policy

German Bundestag, Plenarprotokoll 20/105, pp. 12701-12702.

Frau President. Ladies and gentlemen.

“We have erred in regards the energy transition”.

            Jürgen Coße (SPD): You have erred in regards Putin!

Who said that ten years ago already? No climate denier, no conspiracy theorist and no AfD politician. No, it was Habeck’s dismissed State Secretary Graichen, whom he last week dismissed as one of those who ran the energy transition. Graichen ten years ago verbatim:

We have erred in regards the energy transition. Not in a few details, but in a central point. The many…windmills and solar installations which Germany is building do not do what we have promised for them. It was hoped that they would replace the dirty coal power plants…Yet they do not do that…

 

If Graichen thus knew ten years ago that the energy transition does not work, why then has it been with all power forced through? Why was agriculture and species protection annulled by emergency decree, the fought-for minimum distance between dwellings eliminated, the environmental compatibility testing disempowered and the consultation rights of citizens eliminated so as to make possible the construction of an additional 90,000 wind industry installations, and thereby maximize the damages of the self-confessed errors, Herr Habeck?

Although Graichen knew exactly that the energy transition does not at all work, he wanted, in your motion, Herr Habeck, with the heating hammer to force more than 60 million people in the future to heat only with electricity. He nevertheless quite clearly knew that there was not sufficient electricity for that due to the shutdown of nuclear and coal power plants. Thus for example Germany’s largest housing company cannot operate countless electric heating pumps because of the lack of electricity. He nevertheless quite knowingly wrote the draft law that, for most people, only the installation of a heating pump is possible – and that, even though heating with electricity is around 30 percent more expensive than with gas. It’s good that such a person is gone!

Yet now this heating hammer must also go, and indeed completely. Since it is completely absurd that people shall be forbidden to heat with gas while the government at the same time wants to build 50 gas power plants with which it is desired, with dirty fracking gas, to generate electricity which will in the future warm the people. What an absurdity!

            Bernhard Herrmann (Greens): That is nonsense!

As I calculated for you in April that this heating hammer would cost people 2,000 billion euros, you here in the German Bundestag looked at me in disbelief and shook your heads. Now you yourselves of the FDP quite obviously have re-considered and even come to 2,500 billion euros, thus 30,000 euros per capita. Scientists confirm that with that it still comes not once to a savings of CO₂. The imbecility was nevertheless confirmed by your FDP colleagues – who have reconsidered: 2,500 billion euros.

Yet one thing is clear: The heating transition is not doable; since we do not have sufficient heating pumps, we do not have sufficient tradesmen, we do not have sufficient electricity and the people certainly do not have sufficient money so as to pay for this craziness.

Now come you of the CDU to play at being the nation’s saviours and ostensibly want a socially acceptable re-start of the heating transition. As to what you understand as “social”, have you clearly and distinctly indicated with your motion in the last sitting. You therein set out to make the Brussels CO₂ certificate for oil and gas so expensive that the people practically can no longer afford oil and gas. Experts proceed therefrom to that by 2027 it comes to a tenfold increase of CO₂ prices and up to 300 euros per ton. For a liter of diesel, that means a price increase of almost one euro. That is what you of the CDU understand as “socially acceptable”.

The only thing that is really socially acceptable and which protects people from old age poverty and a de facto expropriation is to dispose of this entire heating transition on the dung heap of history.

 

[trans: tem]

 

 

 

 

Marc Bernhard, February 10, 2023, Electricity Meters and Surveillance

German Bundestag, Plenarprotokoll 20/86, pp. 10290-10291.

Frau President. Ladies and gentlemen.

Imagine, your electricity service knows when you get up, when you go to bed, whether you are alone at home, when you cook what you eat and what you watch on television.

            Till Steffen ( Greens): What is that for complete rubbish?

And then also imagine that the electricity service can at anytime without warning turn off the heating and the electricity for e-autos.

            Markus Hümpfer (SPD): That is not right!

            Rainer Kraft (AfD): Ask Herr Müller!

That means: You come home from work glad of your warm dwelling. Which however is cold because for you, on account of electricity rationing, the heating electricity was shut off.

Maik Außendorf (Greens): You need for once use your intelligence and not cool down the level!

So you decide to drive to friends so as to warm up. Yet the accumulator of your e-auto is empty; since for that also the electricity was shut off. You believe this is from a Hollywood end-of-times movie or from George Orwell’s 1984?

            Maik Außendorf (Greens): A bad AfD fantasy, this is!

No, these are the scenarios which this government prepares with this law.

That the intelligent electricity counter, the so-called Smart Meter which the government wants to extensively bring to every household, makes possible the deepest insight into the private life of citizens is even confirmed by a study of your own Federal Research Ministry. Researchers of the FH Münster could with this Smart Meter exactly determine when which household equipment was used and even which television program was watched.

            Timon Gremmels (SPD): What you peek at, I know without a Smart Meter!

How valuable this data is can be seen in that Google is giving consideration to making free electricity available to customers for access to their data.

The government asserts that with Smart Meter electricity costs would fall and the stability of the network would improve. Yet what the government here is actually doing is to shift onto the backs of the citizens the blame for its own failures in its botched energy transition. Since, who  may disconnect all, withdraw from all, and wants to provide for an industrial nation with wind and sun alone, is himself the greatest danger for the stability of our energy supply.

Counter to better knowledge, the Federal government asserts – you too, Herr Habeck, plainly – that with the Smart Meter electricity costs would fall. Yet the Ernst & Young analysis commissioned by your own ministry comes to the conclusion, as can be read word for word in evaluations of your analysis, “that no costs are to be saved in average households with intelligent counters”. It is further said: “Accordingly, the costs considerably exceed the possible savings.” An extensive installation obligation is evaluated in this analysis “as unreasonable”. And consumer protection organizations in States which have already introduced these Smart Meters confirm that as a result costs have even further increased.

What you are thus doing here is to knowingly deceive the people in this country so as to divert from your own total failures in regards the energy transition. According to the federal association of consumer centrals, you thereby expose people to dangers of criminal machinations, since this data can be abused. For the people, this law yields no use, but only harms and risks.  

Simply let the world’s safest nuclear power plants and cleanest coal power plants continue to run! Then we need not at all occupy ourselves today with this entire madness. Do not give Big Brother a chance!

            Michael Kruse (FDP): We give the rightists no chance!

 

[trans: tem]