“The Energiewende at its limit”

There are limits to a national energy transition in Germany, writes economy professor Andreas Löschel, from the University of Münster, in a guest article for the Süddeutsche Zeitung. If a few countries like Germany and the UK decide to phase-out coal power production but eastern European countries fail to do the same, emissions could be exported to these countries, he argues. Without additionally reducing the amount of CO₂ allowances in the European Emissions Trading System (EU ETS), the emissions that Germany saves would be emitted somewhere else at a later time. If lowering the overall amount of allowances is not successful, Germany could buy and delete the allowances that it does not need to prevent them from being used elsewhere.

Read the article in German here.