Last winter, in order to protect the dwindling completely full strategic gas reserves, the government issued an order for all govenment-owned office buildings to limit the central heating to no more than 19° C because that seemed to be the most pointlessly bureaucratic solution at the time.

This included buildings that don’t even use gas for heating. Remote heat? Geothermal heat? Free waste heat that you have to actively vent to the atmosphere in order to lower the room temperature? Yep, all required to not exceed 19° C. The building I worked in at the time (for a company that rented some excess floor space) actually wasted energy adhering to this well thought-out rule.

So yeah, I’d say that in order to change a lightbulb you need at least 1000 Germans. You need both chambers of parliament to create and pass a new ordinance that applies specifically to this lightbulb (and several other contexts it has no business applying to but does because it’s too vaguely worded). Then you need at least three different expert panels to advise the government, regulatory agencies to make sure the ordinance is adhered to, licensed trainers to make sure the people executing the job are formally certified to do so… Actually, we might have to get the European Parliament involved; the new ordinance might benefit from being propoted to a European standard.

I’ll get back to you about this in about three to five years; we need to get this figured out.