It appears to be merely a delay of about two months; the substance of the Efficiency Act will not be reopened. However, the law has not yet been passed. At the request of the AfD, a roll call vote was held on July 7, 2023, during which it was determined that significantly fewer than half of the members of the Bundestag were still present. According to the Rules of Procedure, the Bundestag was therefore unable to reach a quorum. Scheduled votes had to be canceled. But now to the substance: what will the law look like once it’s passed?

Flashback to October 2022: In the first draft of the EnEfG, the Ministry of Economic Affairs had sought to legally require companies to implement “economic” investments in energy efficiency measures within two years. Failure to do so would have resulted in a fine. However, such an “efficiency-only” approach would have been untenable for the business community, as the BDI also emphatically explained in discussions with members of parliament and the ministry. Their efforts paid off: the cabinet has scrapped this investment requirement. It remained unclear, however, whether the German law should go beyond the requirements of the EU Efficiency Directive (“gold plating”) or whether—as proposed in the BDI’s statement—it should significantly reduce bureaucracy and merely implement EU law on a one-to-one basis.

Scaled Back: “Gold Plating” Remains, but Is Significantly Reduced

In many cases, requirements stricter than those mandated by the EU remain in place. For example, companies must now implement an energy management system if their total final energy consumption exceeds 7.5 gigawatt-hours. The EU Energy Efficiency Directive does not require this until 23 gigawatt-hours. Additionally, supplementary legal obligations regarding the energy management system remain in place, even though the EU Energy Efficiency Directive does not require them.

It is very encouraging, however, that the Bundestag has significantly reduced companies’ data collection and disclosure requirements and has also greatly streamlined the efficiency targets: For the period up to 2030, there are now no longer any absolute consumption reduction targets, and the primary energy targets are also being eliminated as of 2030. The general goal of reducing final energy consumption by 45 percent between 2008 and 2045 remains in place.

Clarified: No consumption limits for companies in the future either

The Bundestag has taken seriously the concern—also expressed by the BDI—that a rigid efficiency law could stifle future business growth. It has now been decided that the law will not introduce any limits on the individual consumption of businesses or private households. Regarding the obligation to utilize waste heat, the law now specifies in greater detail that this must be done only to the extent that it is reasonable and that “technical, economic, and operational considerations must be taken into account.”

Relief: Regulations for Data Centers Significantly Relaxed

The draft Efficiency Act had faced particularly sharp criticism for its rigid regulations targeting data centers. There were fears that such regulations would push Germany out of the international market. The Bundestag took this concern seriously as well and made a whole series of changes regarding data centers:

• The criterion requiring a five-kilometer distance from the nearest heating network has been removed; this allows for a free choice of location rather than limiting options to just a few sites in the country
• Detailed regulations on inlet temperatures have been removed
• The digital platform for the energy efficiency registry has been eliminated.

Practice will show how the newly adopted Energy Efficiency Act proves effective, what additional burdens it entails, and whether it will enable the annual target of saving 45 terawatt-hours of final energy to be achieved. One thing is already clear: just as with energy efficiency itself, the regulation of energy efficiency will continue to evolve.