Bundestag decides on a higher CO2 price – consequences for refueling and heating

Fueling and heating are likely to become more expensive next year. The Bundestag voted to increase the CO2 price. The Bundestag has also approved the supplementary budget for 2023 and – as a prerequisite for this – the renewed suspension of the debt brake.

The Bundestag has cleared the way for a higher CO2 price for fuel, gas and heating oil. Parliament decided that from January 45 euros per ton of CO2 emitted will be due. Currently it is 30 euros. The Bundestag thus implemented the first part of the traffic light government’s large budget package.

The traffic light actually only wanted to increase the CO2 price to 40 euros at the turn of the year because of the high energy prices. But after the Federal Constitutional Court’s budget ruling, we are now returning to the steeper path that the former CDU/SPD government had set out years ago.

The income from the CO2 price flows into the Climate and Transformation Fund (KTF), which finances projects for climate protection, among other things.

Surcharges for refueling and heating

Consumers now have to reckon with rising fuel, oil and gas prices. According to the ADAC, a liter of gasoline could be around 4.3 cents more expensive at the turn of the year. Diesel drivers would have to expect an increase of around 4.7 cents.

According to calculations by the comparison portal Verivox, gas becomes more expensive by 0.39 cents per kilowatt hour, heating oil by 4.8 cents per liter. A model family with a heating requirement of 20,000 kilowatt hours would therefore have additional annual costs of 78 euros for gas and 96 euros for oil heating.

Federal Government makes use of emergency

The Bundestag also approved the traffic light coalition’s supplementary budget for the current year. The majority of MPs voted in a roll-call vote in favor of the budget change, which was made necessary by the budget ruling.

As a prerequisite for this, Parliament had previously suspended the debt brake anchored in the Basic Law for the year 2023, for the fourth year in a row. The decision was made with the required Chancellor majority of 414 yes votes, 242 no votes and nine abstentions. The federal government justifies this with an exceptional emergency as a result of the war in Ukraine, which is provided for as an exception in the Basic Law.

This essentially puts the loan financing of energy price support from the WSF crisis fund on a different legal basis. Previous credit authorizations had expired due to a ruling by the Federal Constitutional Court.

New debt of 70.6 billion euros

With the supplementary budget, the federal government, with planned new debt of 70.6 billion euros, exceeds the borrowing permitted under the debt brake by 44.8 billion euros. Of this, 43.2 billion euros are attributable to energy price support for gas, district heating and electricity.

Around 1.6 billion euros are earmarked for the flood relief fund after the flood disaster in the Ahr Valley in 2021. Its financing from old credit authorizations was also no longer applicable following the Constitutional Court ruling on the KTF.

The court had decided that loans taken out while the debt brake was suspended could only be used in the year in which the emergency was declared. The court therefore deprived the traffic light government of 60 billion euros that it had transferred to the KTF from Corona loans.