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6. Discussion and Q&A
QUESTION:
What policies, such as incentives, regulation or leading-by-doing, are effective and efficient to enhance
adoption of green buildings in Germany?
Dr Rüdiger Kratzenberg: You have to start on many levels at the same time. It
begins with education in the school - making pupils and students comprehensive
on these topics. You have to give some public money, especially to land owners
and the owners of buildings, and you have to put a lot of money into research.
This is at the first level maybe the most effective thing you could do - to spend
much money on research for technical components. At least you can think over
some tax cuts or something similar. But it must always be a large, wide array of
components coming forward; it is not a single thing.
QUESTION:
The Plus Energy project targets not only buildings but also mobility. Now that we have got to this point in
Germany – which has taken many years and a lot of effort – in terms of energy use, will you be looking at the
broader scale of how cities are planned, for example how many kilometres people have to drive per day?
Dr Rüdiger Kratzenberg: That depends very much on where are you living. Of
course, it makes a big difference if you are living in a great city agglomerate or in
the countryside. Of course, this strategy to bring in electric vehicles is firstly
taken in the cities. On the other hand, we are making a lot of effort to bring-up
our public transport systems also. But Germans love to go by car, so it could be
very good for the environment to bring in more electric cars, and we are planning
to have just about 10 million electric cars on our roads by 2020. We work
together with the industry of course, with all the other players on this field, and
also invest some public money in this field also. Especially still, the storage of
electric energy in batteries is problematic. But we will move ahead in this field.
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