German Greens call for national “climate fund” to finance reduction and mitigation measures

Germany should set up a national fund endowed with billions of euros to finance climate action measures and ensure that short-term budgetary considerations do not thwart these, the Green Party’s parliamentary group leader Katrin Göring-Eckardt told newspaper Bild am Sonntag in an interview (paywall). “Climate costs have to be bundled from now on – spanning from construction to the environment and the economy and to the transport sector,” Göring-Eckardt said, adding that the costs of inaction had to be made more transparent. The former Green Party leader said the money should be invested in renewable energy infrastructure, such as modern transmission lines, and mitigation measures like higher dykes against storm tides and reforestation. However, she did not specify how the necessary funds should be raised but promised that her party would “work out a comprehensive concept in the next weeks” in which the Greens want to demonstrate how their propositions could be financed. 
In a poll (paywall) commissioned by the newspaper about the preferences regarding who should follow Angela Merkel as Germany’s next chancellor, Green Party head Robert Habeck led against competitors from Merkel’s conservative CDU party. According to the poll, 51 percent of respondents said Habeck should become chancellor in a run-off against CDU party head Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer, who was favoured by 24 percent of respondents. In Germany, the chancellor is elected by a parliament majority, not in direct elections by citizens.

Germany has already set up a federal special fund for energy and climate that is being filled with earnings from emissions trading under the EU’s ETS scheme. It also receives contributions by the country’s nuclear power plant operators but cannot be directly filled with tax money.