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Fill up with electricity: With your e-vehicle you hardly emit any greenhouse gases
Photo: Simon Skafar / iStockphoto / Getty Images
Did you know: As a driver, you have a right to emissions that are harmful to the climate, and you can blow them into the air.
But if you own an electric car or buy another electric car in the course of the year, you can sell your right to this climate dirt.
Because you emit little or no greenhouse gases with your e-car.
You can get around 350 euros for this.
This bonus will be available once a year from 2022, even if you don't get the electric car until December.
But you have to be active yourself.
This premium may even increase in the coming years.
Many new companies are currently paying high premiums, but payments are also organized by large motor vehicle insurers such as HUK, which has just entered the market, and Allianz, which handles this through ADAC.
The climate footprint of the mineral oil companies
The idea with the premiums comes from the EU and is a little outside the box.
Goal: The mineral oil companies should act less harmful to the climate, and at the same time they should push the e-car boom for us citizens.
The EU has therefore decreed two things.
First, the oil companies have to reduce the climate footprint of their industry every year.
Technically, this is regulated in such a way that Shell and Co. have to meet a so-called greenhouse gas reduction quota (in short: GHG quota).
In Germany, this is regulated in the Federal Immission Control Act.
In order to meet the quota, the companies can, for example, sell more biofuels, produce their fuel with lower emissions or simply purchase pollution rights from eco-powered vehicles that they do not need themselves.
That's exactly what the petroleum companies do.
For years they have been buying such certificates from the electricity providers who operate public charging stations in Germany.
The certificates certify the use of electricity when operating cars, i.e. car traffic with less greenhouse gas emissions.
The unused pollution rights are sold to the oil industry.
Since 2022, there has been a new, inexpensive way for corporations to acquire such rights.
The companies can buy unused pollution rights from private owners of e-cars.
Usually not directly from the driver himself, but via various companies that act as intermediaries.
How does the sale work?
And how does it work?
Should the power consumption of every e-driver be measured now?
Charging station operators can measure the extent to which they fill up with electricity and thus reduce the emission of greenhouse gases.
But no.
The legislature has deliberately simplified the procedure: The responsible Federal Environment Agency simply certifies every car, every small truck and every large scooter that is purely electrically driven and assigns them a standardized amount of greenhouse gases saved.
And the owner is allowed to sell them once a year.
The Federal Environment Agency assumes that 2000 kilowatt hours of electricity will be processed per year.
If you own an electric car, you should not miss out on this bonus.
"Finanztip" lists a few dozen companies, some of which have been set up specifically for this purpose.
They collect these pollution rights from motorists in order to then sell them collectively to Shell and Co.
Large insurers are also quite active in collecting the pollution rights.
They collect customers for the agents from their clientele.
Technically, the process is as follows:
You report to the intermediary with your vehicle registration document and register.
He submits your application to the Federal Environment Agency.
This checks whether you are actually the owner of the car.
And if you haven't already applied for your award somewhere else this year.
The flat-rate calculation then means that it is completely irrelevant for the calculation of the premium whether the car is used from January to December or only from August to December.
Or whether it's about a scooter.
Once the Federal Environment Agency has registered the fully electric vehicle and owner, the money can flow.
Providers such as Huk promise that the bonus – in this case 350 euros for the car – will then be credited to your account within 14 days.
However, the Federal Environment Agency admits that a waiting time of at least two months must be expected for processing in the office.
As written: The premium is also available for small trucks.
But then it is 50 percent higher.
For the big scooters, on the other hand, it is just as high as for the cars.
The Federal Environment Agency has defined a separate category for e-buses: 36 times the savings of an average car are set there.
Bus companies can therefore count on bonuses of more than 10,000 euros.
What always sounds a bit unusual is now a thriving business.
The Federal Environment Agency wrote to me this week that in the few months of this year, emission rights from 160,000 pure electric cars have already been traded in Germany.
Roughly speaking, that corresponds to more than 50 million euros going to car owners.
Sell to whom?
Only one question remains for the car owner: Who do I want to sell my emission rights to?
Where is the process easy?
And where is the most money?
At first glance, the decision is not easy because there are many new companies that have discovered the business.
Companies that you don't (yet) know, such as »Elektrobenefit« or »Konstromen«.
A few old top dogs have also lined up and make their offer:
Electricity companies such as the green electricity company Lichtblick and the electricity giants EnBW and E.on,
the two largest German car insurers HUK and Allianz,
the automobile club ADAC with its 20 million members, which also undertakes the processing for Allianz.
The new companies currently have the larger market shares.
If you are interested in convenient processing and one of the top dogs already has your account number, you can also choose the corporations this time.
The insurers pay a flat rate of 350 euros, which the ADAC also promises plus a bonus for its own members.
Lichtblick starts at 345 euros.
There is some commission in the system.
My »Finanztip« expert Inesrutschmann has calculated that the flat-rate emission allowances for electric cars are worth around 400 to 450 euros.
That's why there's often a little more to Nynex Satellite and Electro-Advantage.
These are also currently big marketers.
In principle, as an e-car owner, you could even register yourself as a dealer for your emission rights, according to the relevant FAQ from the Federal Environment Agency.
However, this is more cumbersome, and mineral oil companies prefer to buy such rights from a dealer who can offer many certificates than from individual private individuals.
One last question: what happens to your carbon credits if you don't sell them?
The answer is: currently nothing.
From a purely legal point of view, the federal government could claim these emission rights for itself and auction them off on the electricity exchange and thus achieve millions in revenue.
However, the appropriate legal ordinance is still missing, which the new government has not dealt with in the past few months.
We probably shouldn't tempt the government at all: If the number of purely electric cars increases significantly in the coming months, even with state subsidies, it would be nice if the owners took care of the premium themselves.
Then the money from the oil companies ends up in the pockets of the e-mobilists.
