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Robert Habeck: Wants to promote investment and operating costs for companies with climate protection agreements
Photo:
Michael Kappeler / dpa
The traffic light government has undertaken to support German industrial companies in converting to climate-friendly production.
Federal Economics Minister Robert Habeck (Greens) has now spoken to the newspapers of the Funke media group about exactly how the transition to a marketable green industry should work.
With so-called climate protection agreements, both investment and operating costs are to be subsidized over a period of 15 years.
Habeck told the newspapers that this state funding stimulates the necessary innovations, supports companies in the transition and helps to promote the use of hydrogen.
»With the climate protection agreements, we are opening a new chapter, and Germany is taking on a pioneering role.«
The new funding mechanism is therefore not aimed at all industrial companies, but is intended to finance a few selected, large production facilities.
The prerequisite is that the respective companies produce exclusively with electricity from renewable energies.
According to the report, climate-friendly production is often so costly that companies cannot switch to it because they would otherwise have a too great a cost disadvantage in competition.
That is why Habeck wants to compensate for the additional costs that arise for more climate-friendly production at large companies with high CO2 emissions.
In this way, new, transformative technologies should become marketable much faster.
The moment that climate-friendly production becomes cheaper than conventional production, the payment should reverse.
The subsidized companies then pay their additional income to the state.
The draft is currently being voted on by the associations.
Habeck's goal is for the funding guidelines to come into force in the first half of 2023.
Green boss Lang is pushing for faster approvals
This is particularly problematic in the chemical, cement and steel sectors, the latter being the largest CO2 producer in the industry.
In these industries, the production processes cannot simply be switched to renewable energy.
In addition, many systems are getting old and need to be replaced.
In the steel industry, the main focus is on replacing coking coal with hydrogen generated using wind or solar power, and in the chemical industry on ammonia production.
In the cement industry, underground storage of CO2 is in the air, but the Greens reject this technology.
Green leader Ricarda Lang urged more speed in energy and transport policy.
"The fact that we have built an LNG terminal in six months shows what we are capable of," Lang told the "Bild am Sonntag".
»This must now also apply to every solar panel, every wind turbine.«
It currently takes five to seven years before a planned wind power project can be connected to the grid.
Lang wants that time to be halved.
“By the next federal elections, we will be building significantly more wind turbines.
The bureaucracy must finally take a back seat here.« A goal for 2023 must also be to make faster progress in expanding the rail network.
»In a modern country like Germany, there must be a punctual train.«
Apr/AFP
