Germany weighs joint fund with carmakers to refit diesel autos - report

The German government is considering creating a joint fund with carmakers to pay for advanced exhaust systems that make diesel cars cleaner, reports German weekly Der Spiegel. The fund would back the hardware retrofitting of a large part of Germany’s 15 million diesel cars with selective catalytic reduction (SCR) systems, particularly those slated for export to the US - where tougher pollutant limits exist. Initially, retrofitting would be done in areas at risk of possible driving bans, such as Stuttgart, the Rhine-Main region, and Munich. Carmakers could contribute 5 billion euros to the fund, which would also include taxpayer money, writes Der Spiegel. A German finance ministry spokesman dismissed Spiegel’s report, however, saying the programme was “not known in the Federal Ministry of Finance,” and stressing that it was not a “priority measure” in the new government’s coalition agreement and had therefore not been funded, according to RP Online. Neither the federal government's nor the transport ministry's press office responded to the Clean Energy Wire's request for comment.

Find a short online version of the Spiegel article in German here, the RP Online article in German here and a Reuters article in English here.

For background, read the CLEW factsheet Diesel driving bans in Germany – The Q&A.