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Climate change: Federal Environment Agency demands CO₂ price of more than one hundred euros

2021-06-15T09:44:12.567Z


The President of the Federal Environment Agency has called for a significantly higher tax on climate-damaging CO₂ emissions. This is the only way to develop a »steering effect« of the pollution rights. However, social hardship should be cushioned.


Enlarge image

Exhaust of a diesel car: CO2 tax as a steering instrument

Photo: MARTIN MEISSNER / AP

The President of the Federal Environment Agency (UBA), Dirk Messner, considers a significant increase in the CO₂ price to be necessary in order to have a sufficient steering effect in the direction of climate protection.

»The CO₂ price will have to rise.

All experts agree on that.

By 2029 we will end up with a CO₂ price of 100 euros plus X, if we're honest, «said Messner on Deutschlandfunk.

Currently, the fee for the emission of the greenhouse gas in the generation of heat and transport is 25 euros per ton.

It is expected to rise to 55 euros by 2025.

The Greens have just decided at their party congress to demand a CO2 price of 60 euros from 2023.

In the past few days there had been heated public debates, mainly because of the rise in petrol prices associated with higher CO₂ prices.

Although the Union and, with restrictions, the SPD, in principle, support the CO₂ price as a steering instrument, the criticism was directed primarily against the Greens.

Messner assessed corresponding statements by, among others, SPD chancellor candidate Olaf Scholz as "campaign rhetoric".

The Mercator Institute for Climate Change and Global Commons (MCC) recently calculated how such rising CO₂ prices will affect the respective sections of the population in their wallets.

According to this, a climate surcharge of around 50 euros, which the government plans to raise in a few years' time, costs German households between 120 and 350 euros a year on average.

While middle income groups only have to spend up to 0.9 percent of their consumption budget on higher gasoline or heating costs, the affluent third of the population incurs significantly lower burdens.

The social gap would be even greater if the CO₂ price were increased to the Messner-required level of more than one hundred euros.

Then, according to the study, "the additional burden could hardly be communicated politically".

The UBA boss therefore campaigned for “climate money” as a social compensation for rising CO₂ prices.

This should flow to the households via a direct transfer and could be "more visible" than relief through the electricity price.

The reimbursement should include around 50 to 70 percent of the income from CO₂ pricing, recommended the UBA President.

The rest should flow into the ecological restructuring of the economy.

According to him, however, an increase in the commuter allowance would be counterproductive, as this would encourage further urban sprawl.

sbo / afp

Source: spiegel

All business articles on 2021-06-15

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