German finance minister lays out vision for climate policies including changes to taxes, levies

Ahead of tomorrow’s first meeting of the so-called climate cabinet, German finance minister Olaf Scholz has launched his vision for Germany’s energy transition. In his “Energy Concept 2038”, a four-page paper seen by Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (FAZ), Scholz calls for more commitment for climate action within the government. “We especially have to focus on the expansion of the energy supply and the grid,” FAZ correpsondent Andreas Mihm quotes Scholz’s paper. Scholz backs the proposal for a climate action law by fellow SPD minister Svenja Schulze, saying that her draft is setting the standards to be followed. He also warns that more CO2 has to be saved in the building and transport sectors, stressing that “two decades of private and public investment in cross-sector transformation of the energy and mobility system” were required. To this end, Scholz suggests a balanced reform of the taxes and levies on electricity so as to ensure an efficient sector coupling and development of power-to-x technologies – without, however, mentioning a price on CO2, Mihm writes.

On Wednesday, the climate cabinet set up by Chancellor Angela Merkel is meeting for the first time. The round of ministers with key responsibilities touching climate issues aims to create a more joint-up effort in working towards emission reduction measures across all sectors. Merkel has said that passing a climate action law by the end of the year would be one of the objectives of the group.