News Digest Item
25 Jan 2018

Germany’s negotiating parties look at CO2 taxation in non-ETS areas

Clean Energy Wire

SPD energy spokesperson Bernd Westphal said the parties in talks to form Germany's next government - the Social Democrats (SPD) and Angela Merkel's conservative CDU/CSU bloc - will come up with some form of taxation of greenhouse gases in sectors not covered by the European emissions trading system (ETS). Without changes to the way the country's renewable development is financed, integrating sectors such as mobility and heating will be impossible, Westphal told an energy industry conference organised by business daily Handelsblatt. His CDU counterpart, Thomas Bareiß, cautioned that he still sees "the need to talk", warning that any change to the system must not "overburden" certain social groups, such as long-distance commuters. Ideally, heating and transport would be included in the European ETS, but this was "impossible at the moment," Bareiß said. 
Pro-business FDP energy politician Hermann Otto Solms said a German CO2 price had also been discussed in the ill-fated Jamaica coalition talks with the CDU/CSU and the Green Party but was rejected by the conservatives at the time.

All texts created by the Clean Energy Wire are available under a “Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International Licence (CC BY 4.0)” . They can be copied, shared and made publicly accessible by users so long as they give appropriate credit, provide a link to the license, and indicate if changes were made.

Journalism for the energy transition

Get our Newsletter
Join our Network
Find an interviewee