2023-12-17 11:23:37
That sounded like a good idea at first. When the fog cleared over the coalition’s budget deliberations on Wednesday, it became clear that, after much back and forth, climate-damaging emissions would become as expensive in just two weeks as planned years ago.
Patrick Bernau
Editor responsible for economics and “value” at the Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung.
Ralph Bollmann
Correspondent for economic policy and deputy head of economics and “Money & More” for the Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung in Berlin.
The surcharge is then 45 euros per ton, which is around 4.3 cents more per liter of gasoline or additional heating costs of 78 euros per year for a model family with a requirement of 20,000 kilowatt hours. The Greens had already negotiated it into the climate law in the drought year of 2019.
After the Russian attack on Ukraine, the traffic light suspended the surcharge again because of rising energy prices, but now it is returning because of the budget crisis. Unlike the rest of the budget, the matter was even passed in the Bundestag on Friday so that it can come into force on January 1st.
From the point of view of many climate experts, it is the right path, but the wrong motive. Because the way the traffic light government is now doing it, CO2 pricing was not originally intended. The state should not enrich itself with the money, but rather give it back to the citizens in order to increase acceptance. What’s more: The matter should even benefit low-income earners because they cause fewer climate-damaging emissions, but the climate money should be distributed equally to the entire population as a capitation fee.
A CO2 price without climate money
“In order to ensure the acceptance of the market system, we will develop a social compensation mechanism beyond the abolition of the EEG levy (climate money),” says the coalition agreement. The message: The reimbursement system should be finalized after 2026 at the latest, when the politically set CO2 price for transport and buildings is also replaced by emissions trading.
This text comes from the Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung.
Finance Minister Christian Lindner has long been able to explain in detail why the matter is more complicated than the average citizen might naively imagine. Laws have to be changed, account numbers have to be recorded, and administrative processes have to be digitized. Nevertheless, he spread optimism. “I assume that this payment mechanism will be available in 2024 and therefore much faster than we considered in the coalition agreement,” he said last year.
Now there is no more talk of it. In the new financial planning, which is not yet available in writing, there are no plans for spending on climate money in the next four years, only income. This is a direct consequence of the Constitutional Court ruling four weeks ago: There was suddenly a gap of 60 billion euros in the climate and transformation fund, from which the federal government wanted to finance expenses for climate protection or chip factories. It is now being filled through reallocations and savings, but also partly through a CO2 price that is not given back to the citizens.
How a carbon price reduces emissions
The CO2 price therefore has a decisive disadvantage: First of all, it costs private households a lot of money. This particularly affects poor people. They cause fewer climate-damaging gases than the rich. They are less likely to have a car, rarely drive long distances and often live in smaller spaces. That’s why they pay less CO2 tax – but only if you look at the euro amounts. In relation to income, the tax is significantly more significant for poor households.
Economists came up with climate money as a solution to this problem years ago. The state takes the CO2 taxes collected and gives them back to the citizens, evenly per capita. Then people will be just as well off economically as before, the poor will be a little better off because they will get more money back than they pay in taxes – the rich will pay in more than they get back.
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