The Federal Cabinet decided on Wednesday how much money from the Climate and Transformation Fund (KTF) should be spent on which projects and funding instruments in the coming years. By circulation, cabinet members approved the economic plan for the coming year and the financial plan up to 2027. In terms of budget, the fund is a special fund outside of the regular federal budget; something like an extra box from the federal government to promote and advance the transformation of business and industry towards climate neutrality – by 2027 with at least 211.8 billion euros.
According to the economic plan, a total of 57.6 billion euros are to flow out of the fund for the various large and small funding programs in the coming year – that would be around 21.6 billion euros more than in the current year. Climate Minister Robert Habeck (Greens) is responsible for 47.4 billion euros. Experience shows that by no means all programs are always called up completely. However, because the KTF is a fund outside the regular budget, funds that are not used can simply be carried over to the next year.
The biggest chunk of expenditure in 2024 should be energy-efficient building renovation; almost 19 billion euros are to flow for it. 12.6 billion are planned for the expansion of renewable energies, another 4.7 billion for the expansion of electric mobility including charging infrastructure. Deutsche Bahn will receive a total of 12.5 billion from the fund for its investments, four billion of which will be in the coming year. The start-up of a hydrogen economy and the billions in subsidies for chip factories that want to settle in Germany are also to be financed from the KTF – 3.8 billion are earmarked for the former next year and a good four billion for the latter.
According to Lindner, the KTF can only be “an intermediate step”.
Just this week it became known that the Taiwanese semiconductor manufacturer TSMC intends to build a plant in Dresden in the coming years; The federal government wants to support the approximately ten billion euro investment with up to five billion. Ten billion in subsidies are also to flow for the long-planned plant of the US manufacturer Intel in Magdeburg.
The income of the KTF comes from European emissions trading – a good eight billion is expected for 2024 – and from the national CO₂ price, which is due on all fossil fuel emissions. The latter is set to rise from 30 euros per tonne of carbon dioxide to 40 euros in 2024. With a view to further increases, circles in the Ministry of Finance said that care would be taken to ensure that there were no “excessive increases”. Life should not be made unnecessarily expensive and the competitiveness of companies should not be weakened unnecessarily. According to the financial plan, almost 22 billion euros are expected from this source of income in 2027, about twice as much as in 2024. On the income side, there is also a global additional income of 9.3 billion for the coming year, and the fund can also have a reserve of almost 71 billion euros.
“We are promoting the conversion to new technologies in a targeted manner and preventing economic structural breaks from occurring,” said Federal Finance Minister Christian Lindner (FDP) on the draft. He emphasized that the KTF could only be “an intermediate step”. “My goal is for us to achieve emissions trading across all sectors that provides market-based incentives.”