EE#8 A boiler ban won't bring the BNP back
The far right can only weaponise heat pumps if you let them
Re-reading Energy Secretary, Claire Coutinho’s, speech at Conservative conference, it had a surprisingly large Europe-facing section for a eurosceptic government.
“Across Europe, we are seeing the consequences when the public feel that they are being forced into the wrong decisions for their homes and their families. In Germany, the climate sceptic AfD is now polling in second position in Europe’s largest economy. In France, over a quarter of people think that climate change is a conspiracy. In the Netherlands, the rise of a new net zero sceptic party stormed their local elections.” Claire Coutinho, Conservative Conference, October 2023
Why bring up the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) in a speech about UK energy policy? For those who wisely don’t follow county elections in East Germany, the link between the UK backsteps on clean heat, and a resurgent far-right party might seem odd. But the government was paying attention. They, and their backbenchers, worry that Net Zero opens them to a threat from the right.
This week - learning the wrong lessons from Germany’s Heating Law.
When the AfD won the county seat of Sonnenberg in the tiny Eastern State of Thuringia in June, it became the first represented by a far-right party in Germany since the war. Former leader of the AfD, Alice Weidel, laid their victory at the foot of the German government’s new heating law.“People are calling it the heat massacre”, she bellowed to supporters.
The heating law was controversial and front page news as Sonnenberg went to the polls. In the weeks leading up to the vote, the national three-party coalition almost collapsed over negotiations on the law. Championed by the Greens to move the country away from gas, it was opposed by the liberal FDP, primarily over its cost, not its principle.
The original proposal (passed eventually but much-changed in September) was radical seeking to ban new installations of oil and gas heating from as early as 2024. It carried hefty fines for non-compliance, bonuses for early adopters, and very few exceptions. The rapid timescale came from years of inaction on clean heat, leaving Germany far away from its climate targets. But this led to unintended consequences with gas boiler sales doubling as people sought to get in before the deadline.
Eastern Germany has been a scene of disaffected politics for some time. In 2019, while the AfD was polling at 14% nationally, they came second with 23.4% in Thuringia’s state elections. The biggest party was Die Linke, equally populist, but on the far left.
Ahead of the state’s elections this autumn the AfD is now polling at 30%. But, while I don’t have the Sankey diagram to map flow, this seems to be almost entirely from a falling Die Linke vote. The governing SPD are in fact polling a per cent or two higher than they achieved in 2019.
The AfD’s vote share has been rising since the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Germany’s exposure to rising gas prices fed growing concerns of economic insecurity. This is especially acute in East Germany where high prices have also shuttered German industry, often the centre of local economies in the otherwise more disadvantaged region. With sixty-two per cent of Germans thinking the Heating Bill would mean higher heating costs, on top of already high bills, it was easy for the AfD to add it to their existing narrative. The FDP scaremongering about green investment costs only amplified this.
At a moment of global insecurity, the Heat Bill was also emblematic of a government struggling with both direction and delivery. This dissatisfaction with politics’ inability to improve lives undoubtedly benefitted the AfD. Similarly, national concern over Germany’s position of support for Ukraine and immigration has benefitted the AfD, both of which trend higher in the East.
The AfD wasn’t the only party raised by Coutinho in her justification of the government’s new net zero turn. If you thought the AfD’s success was down to anger at a boiler phase-out, you might expect to see a similar phenomenon across the continent. After all many countries are accelerating clean heat plans, and many have far-right parties.
In fact, several far-right governments have been leading heat pump installations. Poland, where the Law and Justice party has in fact just lost to a progressive coalition, is installing many more heat pumps than their German counterparts. The far right is part of the governing coalition in installation leaders Finland and tacitly supports the governing coalition of third-placed Sweden. Italy, run by two far-right parties and with the highest far-right vote in the EU is outpacing most of its West European neighbours. In France, with Marine Le Pen still breathing down his neck, Macron has gone huge on a new heat pump installation plan to catch up with peers. There is no relationship between the far-right vote share in a country and the rate of heat pump installations.
Coutinho is right that others have weaponised net zero, like Spanish Vox and the Farmer’s Party (BBB) in the Netherlands, but here they are driven by very specific issues. In Spain, Vox preyed on concerns over farming water shortages in Andalucía, for the Dutch BBB it potential emissions regulations of agriculture. Neither are worried about how people heat their homes, and the UK has no net zero agriculture policy.
The UK government’s response, rather than constraining the far right, risks amplifying them. Unwinding targets plays into a public sentiment that the Tories are incompetent. The far right feeds off insecurity, especially when there’s a perception that government is unable to improve things. All this shift has done is show to Reform or others that the Conservatives are vulnerable to attacks on net zero. It indicates that under pressure government policy will flinch.
Pushing the phaseout date for boilers sends a public message that actually this is expensive, it will cost you more and that’s why we’re delaying. The German Bill was for a phaseout next year, not in 2030.
Instead, focus efforts on ensuring that heat pumps reduce your bills, and ensure a phase out date comes with a coherent plan. Stop gas setting the cost of electricity, update EPCs to support heat pumps, increase the number of suppliers and installers, or back more financial products that reward green technology.
The government should worry about the real reasons the AfD vote is rising. It is not the cost of net zero that worries voters, but concerns that the government isn’t or isn’t able to help with rising costs, or closing factories, more generally. Something a new German splinter party highlighted in their launch yesterday. This gets worse if the Tories are seen to fight amongst themselves rather than actually deliver. As I wrote a few weeks ago, net zero rowbacks will stoke more blue-on-blue fights. Like in Germany, delay only makes change harder and accelerates the pace required later.
I’m all up for learning lessons on this from Europe, let’s just avoid learning the wrong ones or ones that justify what you wanted to do in the first place.
Takeaways
The far right in Germany could weaponise a boiler phase out because of its rapid timescale, and concerns over bills which played into its existing narrative.
As much to blame for a rising far-right is a sense that government is incompetent, unable to deliver and busy in-fighting rather than addressing voters concerns.
The far right are picking specific, not general, fights on net zero, if mainstream parties flinch they’ll ask for more.
Appendix
Sources: European Heat Pump Association, Politico, Eurostat, Party classification is the author’s own.