The heating hammer that killed Germany’s heating law
In the countries where I regularly read the press (UK, Germany, USA), most of the press is conservative-leaning or outright conservative, with liberal outlets reaching only a minority of the population. This means that left-of-centre governments face an uphill battle in the media to sell their policies to the public. In some cases, the media outlets themselves can run a campaign against a policy that can kill a policy. Jan Rosenow from Oxford University, who has an excellent blog himself, where I read about this study first, analysed one such example in Germany . Germany’s previous government, between the centre-left Social Democrats, the centre-right Liberal Democrats and the centre-left to left Greens, took office in 2021 and agreed in their coalition treaty to reform the Gebäudeenergiegesetz (GEG, Buildings Energy Act). The goal was that starting in 2025, new heating systems in private homes would use 65% renewable energy. Following the Russian invasion of Ukraine, this deadline was moved forward to the start of 2024. In February 2023, Germany’s largest tabloid, the conservative ‘Bild’, published a leaked draft of the new regulation and started a campaign to stop the reform. It did so by using some common disinformation tactics. First, it gave the reform a sensationalist name, calling it the Heizungshammer (heating hammer). They claimed that the new law would force owners of older homes to retrofit their heating systems at their own expense or that the law would ban boilers altogether. Of course, none of this was true, and none of it was in the leaked draft law Bild published. Also, they personalised their attacks, typically ascribing the reform to the German Minister of Economic Affairs, Robert Habeck, a member of the Green Party. By making Habeck the face of the law, it tried to rile up opposition in the public and drive a wedge between the coalition partners in government. The Liberal Democrats, who initially supported the new law, stuck their finger in the wind and publicly distanced themselves from the law to gain popularity points in the press. This was the first time of what ultimately became a habit of the Liberal Democrats publicly undermining the coalition as soon as there was resistance against a reform. Eventually, this constant struggle between the Liberal Democrats and the other coalition parties led to the downfall of the coalition and snap elections, where the Liberal Democrats were kicked out of the Bundestag altogether. The chart below shows a word count of reports in the German press about the reform (top chart) and the reporting by Bild (bottom chart). Bild used far more emotional language and language determined to undermine the law than the German press in general. And they were successful. Internal divisions within the governing coalition and weak leadership by the then-chancellor Olaf Scholz meant that the law was ultimately so watered down that it became a completely ineffective reform and thwarted any ambitious reforms by the government on climate and net-zero policies. The upshot of all this is that if you are in government, you need to have the media on site first, and if you don’t, you need strong leadership and a certain degree of stubbornness and strong communication skills to prevail. If you don’t have any of this (as I would argue is the case with Labour in the UK and the Democrats in the US at the moment), then you have lost the fight before it even starts. Word count of press reports (top) and Bild articles (bottom) on Germany’s heating law Source: Loschke et al. (2026)