The German government has slashed an essential efficiency target that aimed for a “close to climate neutral building stock by 2050” from a new building energy draft law (GEG) adopted by the federal cabinet, reports Tagesspiegel Background. In the draft law it is clear that the government does not currently plan to enforce any stricter energy standards for buildings, writes Spiegel Online, according to Clean Energy Wire.

Instead, a review of the energy requirements for new and existing buildings has been postponed until 2023. The German government in 2017 failed to agree on a building energy law which would have set new standards for efficiency in buildings from 2019.

The new draft law will, however, ban the installation of oil-fired heating systems from 2026 unless a building can neither be connected to a gas distribution system nor district heating and supplying heat with renewable energy sources is either technically impossible or economically unreasonable.