Diesel summit: state to set up billion-euro programme to prevent driving bans
Germany’s federal government and the country’s municipalities want to use the so-called diesel summit to set up a programme worth over one billion euros to improve air quality in German cities and prevent looming driving bans for polluting cars, Zeit Online reports. A draft paper by the Chancellery says the summit’s aim was to “make sure that nitrogen dioxide [NO2] limits are observed in affected municipalities”, the article says. According to Zeit Online, 350 million euros will be spent on the electrification of vehicles such as public buses, 150 million euros into retrofitting of buses with diesel engines and up to 500 million euros into digitalisation measures, such as traffic management systems. Michael Ebling, head of the German Association of Local Utilities (VKU), said the billion-euro fund will not be enough to bring about large-scale change. “In fact, we would need a billion-euro fund for every year,” he added.
Read the article in German here.
See CLEW’s Dieselgate timeline and the factsheet The debate over and end to combustion engines in Germany for more information.