“Emissions trading instead of subsidies”

Germany’s most populous state North Rhine-Westphalia (NRW) would be wise to “massively advocate” for shifting the financial foundation of the country’s energy transition from national subsidies to a better functioning European Emissions Trading System (ETS), economist Christoph M. Schmidt writes in a guest article for Rheinische Post. NRW, home to Germany’s two largest utilities and the country’s largest coal mining region, currently pays a lot more for funding renewables than federal states that benefit most from the expansion of solar and wind power, he says. “No other federal state has a greater interest in keeping the Energiewende’s economic costs down than NRW,” Schmidt says.

Read the article in German here.

For background, see the CLEW factsheet Germany ponders how to finance renewables expansion in the future.