“Subsidies in mind”

German Environment Minister Barbara Hendricks’s statement about a possible scrap bonus for combustion engines hints at a coercive policy approach to reducing cutting emissions from the transport sector, Heike Göbel writes in a commentary for Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (FAZ). Hendricks said a scrap bonus could not be ruled out, revealing that she “already has the next wave of subsidies in mind,” Göbel says, adding that the minister's failure to suggest a possible date could be explained by her seeking to avoid public vexation in the upcoming election year. “After all, citizens already pay quite a lot for the Energiewende,” she writes. 

Find more information on private costs of the Energiewende in the CLEW factsheet What German households pay for power.