"German Environment Minister Carsten Schneider told the UN General Assembly on Wednesday that the plan “combines independence, affordability and climate protection…It is not just extreme weather events around the world that demonstrate how urgently we need to do more to protect the climate,” he said. “If the situation in the Strait of Hormuz determines whether people can still afford their daily commute to work, that is not a good state of affairs.”
If there’s been an upside to the Middle East War, it’s that it’s been a giant advertisement for renewable energy. Not just cheaper, cleaner, & better, crucially it means energy-independence, too.
Smart move by Germany. Their industrial and manufacturing base is getting clobbered by China because they stuck with the dying fossil fuel paradigm for too long. Every other EU nation has committed to ending fossil fuel use, hopefully this further accelerates their efforts, too.
The thing is that it also helps people who don’t need it and most of all it helps the fossil fuel industry. So it really just is a subsidy for fossil fuel. They could have supported poor people with more targeted solutions.
Like what? By my math, €2.5B affords 14.5B km of travel. I guess they could buy a bunch of EVs for people? €2.5B could purchase around 47,000, but the cash infusion would raise prices so that’s not terribly accurate. The one thing they could do the German government will not do is allow Chinese BEV brands in without tariffs.