“A higher oil price benefits energy transition”

The higher crude oil price resulting from OPEC’s agreement to reduce its output could benefit Germany’s energy transition, Claudia Kemfert writes in a commentary for the German Institute for Economic Research (DIW). “A higher oil price facilitates the switch to sustainable fuels and ensures that more energy is saved. A low oil price encourages squandering,” she argues. Most importantly, “a low oil price impedes the switch from gasoline and diesel to sustainable mobility with alternative technologies and fuels,” Kemfert writes, by preventing investments in this key industry. “Germany cannot change the oil-oligopoly, but we can and should become independent from it,” Kemfert says.

Read the commentary in German here.

For more information on oil imports, read the CLEW factsheet Germany’s dependence on imported fossil fuels.