Climate Protection Minister Robert Habeck is state-supporting on Tuesday morning: “If we don’t come to a result today, it would not only be seen as a defeat for this round, but for Europe,” says the Green politician during the meeting the EU Environment Minister in Luxembourg. Habeck has come together with fellow party member and Environment Minister Steffi Lemke to negotiate positions with their European counterparts on climate protection laws that are as important as they are controversial. The ministers want to agree on the tightening of emissions trading and on whether and when new cars may no longer have an internal combustion engine.
The debates were still ongoing at the time this issue went to press. The EU Commission suggested their draft law on carbon dioxide emissions from cars, that from 2035 onwards, de facto only electric vehicles can be newly registered. The European Parliament supports this proposal. Now it was up to the EU environment ministers to adopt a negotiating position so that talks between the Council of Ministers, the body of the member states, and the EU Parliament on the final version of the legal act can begin in the autumn.
The discussion among the ministers was complicated by the fact that the FDP and the Greens were arguing in Berlin about how the federal government should vote. Before the meeting, Italy and four other member states also called for combustion models to be banned completely in 2040. However, Italy’s Environment Minister Roberto Cingolani made it clear during the meeting that he would agree to a ban in 2035 if there were exceptions for e-fuels, climate-neutral fuels for internal combustion engines.
Even more important for the green goals of the EU is the tightening of emissions trading, the most important climate protection instrument. The draft law would make it more expensive for industry to emit greenhouse gases; In addition, fuel and oil or gas for heating are also to come under the system in the future. In order to cushion the burden on citizens, revenue from this expansion is to fill a new EU climate social fund. It is intended to support national aid programs to save energy and would redistribute money from richer to poorer member states.
Habeck is generous again
However, the federal government advocated drastically reducing the volume of the pot. However, Eastern European governments only want to agree to the tightening of emissions trading if they receive sufficient financial aid from Brussels – so Berlin’s frugality risked the failure of the reform. On Tuesday, however, Habeck was more generous again at the beginning of the negotiations: the fund could pay out almost 49 billion euros by 2032, not just 18 billion euros, as the federal government had previously demanded, the Green said to his EU counterparts. It was initially unclear whether this would bring about a breakthrough.
Should the controversial end of combustion engines really come about, it would hit the suppliers in Germany harder than the vehicle manufacturers. Because they have now all committed to battery technology as the future drive. Mercedes, for example, wants to be able to only deliver electric cars by 2030, even the sports car manufacturer Porsche plans to use more than 80 percent battery cars by the end of this decade.
In the case of suppliers, on the other hand, the change from pistons, gears and the like to the battery hits harder. Significantly fewer parts are required for electric drives – and for what is still needed, the competition from Asia is significantly greater. Some small suppliers have built their entire business model on parts for the combustion engine. It’s very difficult to convert all of this, including to more software, which then requires different expert knowledge. It would certainly be a small straw if, thanks to an exception for e-fuels, for synthetic climate-neutral fuels, one could continue to deal with engines.
There are far too few plants for e-fuels
Especially since the automotive industry is largely in agreement that e-fuels are needed to achieve the climate targets. However, this calculation is not about new cars, but about the many millions of existing vehicles with combustion engines that will continue to exist after 2035. And a combustion engine drives with e-fuels less polluting than with petrol or diesel.
However, some in the industry fear that a complete phasing out of combustion engines without exceptions for e-fuels would destroy the incentive to invest in plants for these synthetic fuels at all. Such a ban “has something populist about it,” says one from the auto industry. Investments would be sorely needed: chemical plants produce the e-fuels from hydrogen and CO₂, with high power consumption, but climate-neutral if green electricity is used. But there are far too few of these systems. With a view to the current plans, even the fuel industry assumes that e-fuels will only be able to cover three percent of the demand in Europe in 2035.