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Not quite clean: the German Bundestag's motor pool in Berlin's government district
Photo: Urs Moser / Jürgen Ritter / IMAGO
After all, two members of the federal cabinet get a green card from the German Environmental Aid for their company cars.
Agriculture Minister Cem Özdemir with his Audi e-Tron and Environment Minister Steffi Lemke (both Green) with their Mercedes-Benz EQC are fully electric.
This means their vehicles are just below the EU fleet limit of 95 grams of CO₂ per kilometer - even if you assume that they are powered by electricity from a typical German mix and not purely green electricity.
The environmental organization regularly checks the fleet of top politicians for role models.
The last time before the 2021 federal elections, all ministers in the grand coalition received a red card.
Since then, some have announced that they also want to personally meet the traffic light coalition's goal for electric cars.
But apparently they encounter the same delivery problems as normal citizens: If you want electric, you have to wait.
At least at the time of the survey until May, Family Minister Lisa Paus was not yet able to produce the BMW i4 that her predecessor Anne Spiegel (both Greens) had ordered.
Only Özdemir got his Audi in time.
Before the change of government, Svenja Schulze (SPD) was the first federal minister to order the electric Benz that Environment Minister Lemke now drives.
Now, as development aid minister, the social democrat uses a plug-in hybrid instead, which has both an electric and a petrol engine.
This makes her typical of the Berlin cabinet.
The most common model is a plug-in variant of the Audi A8, which, according to environmental aid, has real CO₂ emissions of 283 grams per kilometer built in 2020 - almost as bad as the 7-series BMW with a pure petrol engine, with the building minister Klara Geywitz (SPD) drives up (330 grams of CO₂ per kilometer).
The choice is piquant because the federal government has come to the conclusion that plug-in hybrids do more harm than good to their climate target because of the high proportion of driving in combustion mode.
The grant is scheduled to expire at the end of the year.
All-electric models are already much more widespread at state secretary level.
Ironically, the Green Oliver Krischer, Parliamentary State Secretary in the Ministry of Climate, is the only one who has a hydrogen-electric car as his own company car: a Mercedes-Benz GLC F-Cell.
As an opposition transport politician, Krischer had declared a year ago that he did not consider hydrogen as a car drive "to be a sensible option".
Jennifer Morgan, the climate officer at the Federal Foreign Office, also uses such a car with a fuel cell - but when it is ready to drive;
she does without a personal company car.
Some names are missing from the list of environmental aid: Ministers who, like Chancellor Olaf Scholz, have to listen to the word of the Federal Criminal Police Office for their armored cars are deliberately left out.
For the foreseeable future, there will be no electric cars on offer for this security level with its high weight.
However, a few things are known about the tank for the chancellor, the Mercedes-Benz S-Class »Guard«.
Standard value for CO₂ emissions: 411 grams per kilometer.
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