Federal Chancellor Olaf Scholz apparently wants to use the momentum of the new year: In a letter to Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, he speaks out in favor of an increased commitment to European competitiveness and the reduction of bureaucracy. According to the letter, the aim now is to reduce strategic dependencies and provide targeted support for European companies.
Scholz lists a number of points on which he would like the Commission to take “swift, targeted action”. At the top of his list are less bureaucracy and fewer reporting obligations for companies. It is important to find a “pragmatic balance” between objectives that serve the European economy and those of climate and environmental action. “Where planned projects harm competitiveness, they must be postponed or even completely withdrawn,” he writes. This applies, for example, to the targets for green hydrogen, which are too strict.
The Chancellor also criticizes the excessive burdens imposed by the Sustainability Directive (CSRD), the EU taxonomy, and the Supply Chain Directive (CSDDD). He is calling for the reporting obligation stipulated in the CSRD to be postponed by two years and for the thresholds for turnover and the number of employees to be raised.
In the run-up to the strategic dialog on the future of the automotive industry, which von der Leyen will chair, Scholz makes proposals for the automotive industry. In order to promote e-mobility, he would like the Commission to launch an initiative for a Europe-wide “EV purchase incentive”. He also comments on the tariffs for EVs produced in China in the letter. Here it is important to reach an “amicable result” in the talks with Beijing on the withdrawal of European tariffs.
Scholz also wants support for the energy-intensive industry. He emphasizes the importance of the German and European steel industry, for which he is calling for a concept for a lead market for green steel, among other things. The funding framework for the switch to climate-friendly steel production should be “more pragmatic and flexible”, and the use of natural gas and blue hydrogen should be possible for the time being.
Scholz is critical of the Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism (CBAM), which “disregards the international competitiveness of our own energy-intensive industry on the global market”. Export refunds and less bureaucracy are also needed here.
Get the first weekend of the year off to a good start!
Two of 96 German MEPs are running for the Bundestag in the early federal elections on Feb. 23. In addition, two employees of German MEPs are also running for the Bundestag. One of the two MEPs and the two staff members have a chance of entering the national parliament.
It is reasonably certain that right-wing extremist Maximilian Krah will leave the European Parliament and move to the Bundestag. The 47-year-old, who has been a Member of the European Parliament since 2019, is running for an AfD direct mandate in the “Chemnitz Umland – Erzgebirgskreis II” constituency in Saxony. In 2021, the AfD won the Chemnitz Umland constituency with 28.9% of the vote.
After the European elections, Krah was expelled from the AfD delegation. He had previously relativized crimes committed by the SS. This prompted Marine Le Pen of the Rassemblement National to expel the AfD from the radical right-wing European party family. He is also accused of accepting bribes from pro-Russian forces and providing access to the European Parliament for an assistant who was a spy for China.
Krah is likely hoping that his entry into the Bundestag will help him escape political isolation within his own camp. Of the 15 newly elected AfD MEPs, eight voted for his exclusion and four against on the day after the European elections. Three MEPs abstained.
MEP Damian Boeselager is also running for the Bundestag. The 36-year-old founded the Volt party, which describes itself as pan-European, with fellow campaigners in 2017 and was the only Volt representative to enter the European Parliament for the first time in 2019. A share of 0.7% of the votes cast in Germany was enough for this. He joined the Green Group in the European Parliament. In 2024, he was again elected to the European Parliament in the European elections. This time, four other Volt politicians won a seat in the Strasbourg Parliament alongside him. The Volt delegation once again joined the Green Group.
Boeselager hopes that his candidacy will lead to a breakthrough for the young party in national elections in Germany. So far, Volt has only been represented in the national parliaments of Cyprus and the Netherlands. “I see an opportunity for Volt to enter another national parliament,” he told Table.Briefings. He wants to appeal to voters in a spectrum between the traffic light and the CDU/CSU who are hoping for a “new, moderate, fact-based policy in the center”. In doing so, he is aiming to win over voters, particularly the Greens, who are disappointed with the Green Party’s record of participation in the federal government.
Volt has not yet appeared in the opinion polls for the federal elections. This means that the party has a share of less than three percent of the vote and is therefore far from overcoming the five percent hurdle nationwide.
Boeselager’s goal is for Volt to reach “3 percent plus” in the polls in the remaining weeks: “That would be a signal to our supporters that we can make it into the Bundestag. Then we’ll shoot up to seven percent.” If the concept does not work out and Volt fails to pass the blocking clause, he will keep his seat in the European Parliament, where he is Vice-Chair of the Economic Affairs Committee.
Johannes Volkmann, who has headed the office of CDU MEP Sven Simon since 2020, is running for a direct mandate in the Hessian constituency of Lahn-Dill. In 2021, the SPD won the constituency with a three percent lead over the CDU. In view of the poll results and because he has already achieved high popularity ratings personally, Volkmann is considered to have a good chance of entering the Bundestag.
The 28-year-old grandson of Helmut Kohl is a member of the extended CDU federal executive. “I would like to campaign for a reorientation of China policy in the Bundestag,” Volkmann told Table.Briefings. If he makes it into the Bundestag, however, he will not make any demands as a newcomer. Volkmann has a Master’s degree in China studies and a Bachelor’s degree in political science and sociology.
Helena Wolf, constituency assistant to MEP Udo Bullmann, is running for the Bundestag for the Hessian SPD in Offenbach. She has already worked as an assistant in the Bundestag for two years. The 27-year-old studied mechanical engineering and is the leader of the parliamentary group on Offenbach city council. In 2021, the CDU won the constituency with a lead of 1.4 percentage points over the SPD. Wolf told Table.Briefings: “I would like to campaign for solid funding for local authorities in the Bundestag.” A stable economy and fair distribution are also important to her.
Russia wants to attract new foreign investors to the country – with special security guarantees that they can withdraw an unlimited amount of their capital at any time. No company that was in the country before February 2022 can currently do this.
The appearance of Deputy Finance Minister Alexey Mojsew at the presentation of the plans in December was reminiscent of the famous greed scene from the 1987 film Wall Street. Mojsew said: “We believe that it is not a fantasy that foreign investors can enter the Russian market. We and all those who have been working in the financial market for a long time know very well that greed triumphs over everything else.”
Russia needs money. The war against Ukraine is devouring huge resources. According to Defense Minister Andrey Beloussov, by 2025 it will be 6.3 percent of the gross domestic product, or 32.5 percent of the entire state budget. Janis Kluge from the German Institute for International and Security Affairs (Stiftung Wissenschaft und Politik) even assumes seven to eight percent of GDP. According to old plans from 2023, this expenditure should fall.
The Ministry of Finance and the Russian Central Bank are now preparing a law that guarantees special securities for future foreign investors. Whether the hope that fresh capital will come into the country will be fulfilled is questionable. If Western financial investors do indeed channel money into Russia despite sanctions, it is hard to imagine that Western states will stand idly by and watch these transactions.
However, more than half of all foreign companies are still active in Russia, including many German companies. It is almost impossible to determine exactly how many of the 3,651 German companies that were still in the country in February 2022 have remained. They are not violating sanctions. They have decided – despite moral questions – to stay in the market. And now leaving is bureaucratically more difficult and economically particularly disadvantageous. According to two German interlocutors who are in Moscow, it is now impossible to leave without suffering heavy losses. “You no longer sell – you give away,” said one of them, who regularly talks to German managers and companies in Russia.
In 2024, Russia generated the equivalent of more than €1.4 billion from the exit deals of Western companies. According to media loyal to the Kremlin, this is one and a half times the revenue from 2023. At the end of 2024, revenue from this source exceeded the plans for this year by ten percent. So-called voluntary levies and enforced discounts ensure that a company loses at least 95% of its value when selling its Russian business. In fact, however, it even loses more. This is because the forced discount must be given on the value of the company, which is determined by a state-appointed appraiser. And he does not estimate the value according to the rules of the market.
The money that Western companies earn in Russia can only be transferred abroad in very small tranches. The profits therefore remain in the country. The companies could invest the money locally, but do not do so, as the head of the Metro Group, Steffen Greubel, explained in the Handelsblatt newspaper. The money is therefore parked in Russian banks. The profits of Western companies in Russia therefore help the state budget (through taxes) and the financial sector (through liquidity).
Both Russia and foreign companies are in a dilemma at the end of the third year of the war: Russia earns from every exit deal, but it also loses know-how and long-term revenue from various taxes, such as profit, sales, income, and value-added taxes. Every foreign company that leaves, in turn, loses technology, the value of the company, and a lucrative market in the long term.
According to a German who observes the exit processes in Russia and the pro-Kremlin newspaper Izvestia, hardly any exit procedures are currently being completed. The Kremlin apparently does not want the foreigners to leave. The German interlocutor in Moscow also says that the “big shock” for foreign companies is over and that they have adapted.
Furthermore, according to the second interlocutor, the authorities had apparently understood that it would be better if the factories remained in the hands of the owners. And finally, the profits and values of these foreign companies are also a bargaining chip if Moscow wants to regulate relations with the West.
Europe is at a crossroads: While European regulation is tightening the CO2 limits for new cars next year as planned, the German car industry is struggling to remain competitive. Cheap electric vehicles from China are putting pressure on the market, while ambitious emissions targets are set to accelerate the transformation of the industry – with uncertain consequences for jobs and innovation. In this situation, Volkswagen and Mercedes – unlike BWM or Opel – are pushing to soften the upcoming CO2 limits.
However, softening the CO2 fleet limits in the EU from 2025 would be a serious strategic mistake that would damage the German automotive industry in the long term. Instead of focusing on the future markets of electromobility, such a decision would chain the industry to the past – in a shrinking market for combustion engines.
The future market is clear: electric vehicles. They are already on the way to becoming competitive in terms of production costs. Thanks to falling battery costs, they will be cheaper than combustion engines by the end of this decade at the latest. This development is being accelerated by technological advances, economies of scale and massive investment in the charging infrastructure. At the same time, the operating costs of combustion engines are increasing due to rising energy prices, CO2 levies and higher maintenance costs.
The transition to electromobility is not only inevitable but also economically indispensable for an industry that wants to remain globally competitive. A strategy that continues to rely on combustion engines ignores this dynamic and ties up resources in an outdated concept.
Currently, newly registered cars may not emit more than 115.1 grams of CO2 per kilometer on average in the EU. In 2025, this limit would fall to 93.6 grams. Softening the CO2 limits would mean passing on the costs to consumers. How is that possible?
Lower CO2 fleet limits would slow down the sale of electric vehicles, as the pressure on manufacturers to offer zero-emission vehicles would decrease. This would have immediate consequences: In three years’ time, there would be more vehicles with combustion engines on the roads, which would increase CO2 emissions. These additional emissions would be reflected in the ETS-II emissions trading system, which will also cover the transport sector in the future. Higher emissions lead to a shortage of certificates and therefore to rising prices. These additional costs will be passed on directly to consumers in the form of higher gas and diesel prices at the gas station. The strategy of the Brussels lobbyists therefore amounts to shifting the costs of the transformation from the automotive industry to the public, while at the same time delaying the urgently needed reduction in emissions.
However, a flexibility option that allows the fleet limits to be exceeded in 2025 and in turn overcompensates for the fleet limits for 2026 would have virtually no impact on the ETS II CO2 prices in the following years. In these years, the same amount of CO2 emissions would be generated in the transport sector with or without the flexibility option. In this respect, a flexibility option limited to 2025 and 2026 would be acceptable.
The assumption that the existing CO2 limits for 2025 would result in billions being paid out to the German car industry per se should be treated with caution. Rather, the limits create incentives to push more EVs onto the market at a discount and to offer combustion engines without a discount: a desired effect in order to achieve the fleet limits, avoid fines, and take an important step towards achieving climate targets.
The argument that the softening of fleet limits is necessary to ensure “technological openness” also turns out to be a smokescreen on closer inspection. The aim behind this buzzword is often to keep the combustion engine artificially alive. While hydrogen and e-fuels are propagated as alternatives for propulsion, these technologies are neither sufficiently available nor economically suitable for widespread use in passenger cars.
The cost of producing e-fuels is disproportionately high and the energy loss during their production and use is enormous. Biofuels, on the other hand, are hardly sustainable in large quantities. In fact, these “alternative technologies” are often just a pretext for delaying the transition to electromobility and protecting fossil fuel business models.
The German automotive industry has the opportunity to secure its global leadership position by consistently focusing on electromobility. Competitors from China and the USA are investing massively in electric vehicles and already dominate key markets. Those who now rely on a stagnating past market risk being left behind in global competition. Instead of softening the limits, the EU should stringently maintain its fleet limits and thus set the course for sustainable, future-proof mobility. This is not only good for the climate, but also crucial for the long-term competitiveness of the German automotive industry.
Prof. Dr. Felix Creutzig heads the Land Use, Infrastructure and Transport working group at the Mercator Research Institute on Global Commons and Climate Change (MCC Berlin). He is Bennett Chair for Innovation and Policy Innovation at the University of Sussex and is a member of the Expert Advisory Board on Climate Protection in Mobility.
Federal Chancellor Olaf Scholz apparently wants to use the momentum of the new year: In a letter to Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, he speaks out in favor of an increased commitment to European competitiveness and the reduction of bureaucracy. According to the letter, the aim now is to reduce strategic dependencies and provide targeted support for European companies.
Scholz lists a number of points on which he would like the Commission to take “swift, targeted action”. At the top of his list are less bureaucracy and fewer reporting obligations for companies. It is important to find a “pragmatic balance” between objectives that serve the European economy and those of climate and environmental action. “Where planned projects harm competitiveness, they must be postponed or even completely withdrawn,” he writes. This applies, for example, to the targets for green hydrogen, which are too strict.
The Chancellor also criticizes the excessive burdens imposed by the Sustainability Directive (CSRD), the EU taxonomy, and the Supply Chain Directive (CSDDD). He is calling for the reporting obligation stipulated in the CSRD to be postponed by two years and for the thresholds for turnover and the number of employees to be raised.
In the run-up to the strategic dialog on the future of the automotive industry, which von der Leyen will chair, Scholz makes proposals for the automotive industry. In order to promote e-mobility, he would like the Commission to launch an initiative for a Europe-wide “EV purchase incentive”. He also comments on the tariffs for EVs produced in China in the letter. Here it is important to reach an “amicable result” in the talks with Beijing on the withdrawal of European tariffs.
Scholz also wants support for the energy-intensive industry. He emphasizes the importance of the German and European steel industry, for which he is calling for a concept for a lead market for green steel, among other things. The funding framework for the switch to climate-friendly steel production should be “more pragmatic and flexible”, and the use of natural gas and blue hydrogen should be possible for the time being.
Scholz is critical of the Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism (CBAM), which “disregards the international competitiveness of our own energy-intensive industry on the global market”. Export refunds and less bureaucracy are also needed here.
Get the first weekend of the year off to a good start!
Two of 96 German MEPs are running for the Bundestag in the early federal elections on Feb. 23. In addition, two employees of German MEPs are also running for the Bundestag. One of the two MEPs and the two staff members have a chance of entering the national parliament.
It is reasonably certain that right-wing extremist Maximilian Krah will leave the European Parliament and move to the Bundestag. The 47-year-old, who has been a Member of the European Parliament since 2019, is running for an AfD direct mandate in the “Chemnitz Umland – Erzgebirgskreis II” constituency in Saxony. In 2021, the AfD won the Chemnitz Umland constituency with 28.9% of the vote.
After the European elections, Krah was expelled from the AfD delegation. He had previously relativized crimes committed by the SS. This prompted Marine Le Pen of the Rassemblement National to expel the AfD from the radical right-wing European party family. He is also accused of accepting bribes from pro-Russian forces and providing access to the European Parliament for an assistant who was a spy for China.
Krah is likely hoping that his entry into the Bundestag will help him escape political isolation within his own camp. Of the 15 newly elected AfD MEPs, eight voted for his exclusion and four against on the day after the European elections. Three MEPs abstained.
MEP Damian Boeselager is also running for the Bundestag. The 36-year-old founded the Volt party, which describes itself as pan-European, with fellow campaigners in 2017 and was the only Volt representative to enter the European Parliament for the first time in 2019. A share of 0.7% of the votes cast in Germany was enough for this. He joined the Green Group in the European Parliament. In 2024, he was again elected to the European Parliament in the European elections. This time, four other Volt politicians won a seat in the Strasbourg Parliament alongside him. The Volt delegation once again joined the Green Group.
Boeselager hopes that his candidacy will lead to a breakthrough for the young party in national elections in Germany. So far, Volt has only been represented in the national parliaments of Cyprus and the Netherlands. “I see an opportunity for Volt to enter another national parliament,” he told Table.Briefings. He wants to appeal to voters in a spectrum between the traffic light and the CDU/CSU who are hoping for a “new, moderate, fact-based policy in the center”. In doing so, he is aiming to win over voters, particularly the Greens, who are disappointed with the Green Party’s record of participation in the federal government.
Volt has not yet appeared in the opinion polls for the federal elections. This means that the party has a share of less than three percent of the vote and is therefore far from overcoming the five percent hurdle nationwide.
Boeselager’s goal is for Volt to reach “3 percent plus” in the polls in the remaining weeks: “That would be a signal to our supporters that we can make it into the Bundestag. Then we’ll shoot up to seven percent.” If the concept does not work out and Volt fails to pass the blocking clause, he will keep his seat in the European Parliament, where he is Vice-Chair of the Economic Affairs Committee.
Johannes Volkmann, who has headed the office of CDU MEP Sven Simon since 2020, is running for a direct mandate in the Hessian constituency of Lahn-Dill. In 2021, the SPD won the constituency with a three percent lead over the CDU. In view of the poll results and because he has already achieved high popularity ratings personally, Volkmann is considered to have a good chance of entering the Bundestag.
The 28-year-old grandson of Helmut Kohl is a member of the extended CDU federal executive. “I would like to campaign for a reorientation of China policy in the Bundestag,” Volkmann told Table.Briefings. If he makes it into the Bundestag, however, he will not make any demands as a newcomer. Volkmann has a Master’s degree in China studies and a Bachelor’s degree in political science and sociology.
Helena Wolf, constituency assistant to MEP Udo Bullmann, is running for the Bundestag for the Hessian SPD in Offenbach. She has already worked as an assistant in the Bundestag for two years. The 27-year-old studied mechanical engineering and is the leader of the parliamentary group on Offenbach city council. In 2021, the CDU won the constituency with a lead of 1.4 percentage points over the SPD. Wolf told Table.Briefings: “I would like to campaign for solid funding for local authorities in the Bundestag.” A stable economy and fair distribution are also important to her.
Russia wants to attract new foreign investors to the country – with special security guarantees that they can withdraw an unlimited amount of their capital at any time. No company that was in the country before February 2022 can currently do this.
The appearance of Deputy Finance Minister Alexey Mojsew at the presentation of the plans in December was reminiscent of the famous greed scene from the 1987 film Wall Street. Mojsew said: “We believe that it is not a fantasy that foreign investors can enter the Russian market. We and all those who have been working in the financial market for a long time know very well that greed triumphs over everything else.”
Russia needs money. The war against Ukraine is devouring huge resources. According to Defense Minister Andrey Beloussov, by 2025 it will be 6.3 percent of the gross domestic product, or 32.5 percent of the entire state budget. Janis Kluge from the German Institute for International and Security Affairs (Stiftung Wissenschaft und Politik) even assumes seven to eight percent of GDP. According to old plans from 2023, this expenditure should fall.
The Ministry of Finance and the Russian Central Bank are now preparing a law that guarantees special securities for future foreign investors. Whether the hope that fresh capital will come into the country will be fulfilled is questionable. If Western financial investors do indeed channel money into Russia despite sanctions, it is hard to imagine that Western states will stand idly by and watch these transactions.
However, more than half of all foreign companies are still active in Russia, including many German companies. It is almost impossible to determine exactly how many of the 3,651 German companies that were still in the country in February 2022 have remained. They are not violating sanctions. They have decided – despite moral questions – to stay in the market. And now leaving is bureaucratically more difficult and economically particularly disadvantageous. According to two German interlocutors who are in Moscow, it is now impossible to leave without suffering heavy losses. “You no longer sell – you give away,” said one of them, who regularly talks to German managers and companies in Russia.
In 2024, Russia generated the equivalent of more than €1.4 billion from the exit deals of Western companies. According to media loyal to the Kremlin, this is one and a half times the revenue from 2023. At the end of 2024, revenue from this source exceeded the plans for this year by ten percent. So-called voluntary levies and enforced discounts ensure that a company loses at least 95% of its value when selling its Russian business. In fact, however, it even loses more. This is because the forced discount must be given on the value of the company, which is determined by a state-appointed appraiser. And he does not estimate the value according to the rules of the market.
The money that Western companies earn in Russia can only be transferred abroad in very small tranches. The profits therefore remain in the country. The companies could invest the money locally, but do not do so, as the head of the Metro Group, Steffen Greubel, explained in the Handelsblatt newspaper. The money is therefore parked in Russian banks. The profits of Western companies in Russia therefore help the state budget (through taxes) and the financial sector (through liquidity).
Both Russia and foreign companies are in a dilemma at the end of the third year of the war: Russia earns from every exit deal, but it also loses know-how and long-term revenue from various taxes, such as profit, sales, income, and value-added taxes. Every foreign company that leaves, in turn, loses technology, the value of the company, and a lucrative market in the long term.
According to a German who observes the exit processes in Russia and the pro-Kremlin newspaper Izvestia, hardly any exit procedures are currently being completed. The Kremlin apparently does not want the foreigners to leave. The German interlocutor in Moscow also says that the “big shock” for foreign companies is over and that they have adapted.
Furthermore, according to the second interlocutor, the authorities had apparently understood that it would be better if the factories remained in the hands of the owners. And finally, the profits and values of these foreign companies are also a bargaining chip if Moscow wants to regulate relations with the West.
Europe is at a crossroads: While European regulation is tightening the CO2 limits for new cars next year as planned, the German car industry is struggling to remain competitive. Cheap electric vehicles from China are putting pressure on the market, while ambitious emissions targets are set to accelerate the transformation of the industry – with uncertain consequences for jobs and innovation. In this situation, Volkswagen and Mercedes – unlike BWM or Opel – are pushing to soften the upcoming CO2 limits.
However, softening the CO2 fleet limits in the EU from 2025 would be a serious strategic mistake that would damage the German automotive industry in the long term. Instead of focusing on the future markets of electromobility, such a decision would chain the industry to the past – in a shrinking market for combustion engines.
The future market is clear: electric vehicles. They are already on the way to becoming competitive in terms of production costs. Thanks to falling battery costs, they will be cheaper than combustion engines by the end of this decade at the latest. This development is being accelerated by technological advances, economies of scale and massive investment in the charging infrastructure. At the same time, the operating costs of combustion engines are increasing due to rising energy prices, CO2 levies and higher maintenance costs.
The transition to electromobility is not only inevitable but also economically indispensable for an industry that wants to remain globally competitive. A strategy that continues to rely on combustion engines ignores this dynamic and ties up resources in an outdated concept.
Currently, newly registered cars may not emit more than 115.1 grams of CO2 per kilometer on average in the EU. In 2025, this limit would fall to 93.6 grams. Softening the CO2 limits would mean passing on the costs to consumers. How is that possible?
Lower CO2 fleet limits would slow down the sale of electric vehicles, as the pressure on manufacturers to offer zero-emission vehicles would decrease. This would have immediate consequences: In three years’ time, there would be more vehicles with combustion engines on the roads, which would increase CO2 emissions. These additional emissions would be reflected in the ETS-II emissions trading system, which will also cover the transport sector in the future. Higher emissions lead to a shortage of certificates and therefore to rising prices. These additional costs will be passed on directly to consumers in the form of higher gas and diesel prices at the gas station. The strategy of the Brussels lobbyists therefore amounts to shifting the costs of the transformation from the automotive industry to the public, while at the same time delaying the urgently needed reduction in emissions.
However, a flexibility option that allows the fleet limits to be exceeded in 2025 and in turn overcompensates for the fleet limits for 2026 would have virtually no impact on the ETS II CO2 prices in the following years. In these years, the same amount of CO2 emissions would be generated in the transport sector with or without the flexibility option. In this respect, a flexibility option limited to 2025 and 2026 would be acceptable.
The assumption that the existing CO2 limits for 2025 would result in billions being paid out to the German car industry per se should be treated with caution. Rather, the limits create incentives to push more EVs onto the market at a discount and to offer combustion engines without a discount: a desired effect in order to achieve the fleet limits, avoid fines, and take an important step towards achieving climate targets.
The argument that the softening of fleet limits is necessary to ensure “technological openness” also turns out to be a smokescreen on closer inspection. The aim behind this buzzword is often to keep the combustion engine artificially alive. While hydrogen and e-fuels are propagated as alternatives for propulsion, these technologies are neither sufficiently available nor economically suitable for widespread use in passenger cars.
The cost of producing e-fuels is disproportionately high and the energy loss during their production and use is enormous. Biofuels, on the other hand, are hardly sustainable in large quantities. In fact, these “alternative technologies” are often just a pretext for delaying the transition to electromobility and protecting fossil fuel business models.
The German automotive industry has the opportunity to secure its global leadership position by consistently focusing on electromobility. Competitors from China and the USA are investing massively in electric vehicles and already dominate key markets. Those who now rely on a stagnating past market risk being left behind in global competition. Instead of softening the limits, the EU should stringently maintain its fleet limits and thus set the course for sustainable, future-proof mobility. This is not only good for the climate, but also crucial for the long-term competitiveness of the German automotive industry.
Prof. Dr. Felix Creutzig heads the Land Use, Infrastructure and Transport working group at the Mercator Research Institute on Global Commons and Climate Change (MCC Berlin). He is Bennett Chair for Innovation and Policy Innovation at the University of Sussex and is a member of the Expert Advisory Board on Climate Protection in Mobility.
