Klimapolitik nach der Finanzkrise

Obwohl vielfach angenommen werde, dass die Rezession die Ambitionen der EU und anderer Länder im Kampf gegen den Klimawandel drosseln werde, sei es durchaus möglich, dass das Gegenteil eintrete, meint Christian Egenhofer, ein leitender Wissenschaftler am Centre for European Policy Studies (CEPS).

Despite expectations that funding to tackle climate change will come from private investors and carbon markets such as the EU Emissions Trading Scheme (EU ETS), „we should expect climate change to progressively become the area to which government spending will be directed,“ his November paper contends. 

In fact, the list of new spending areas is „long“, Egenhofer says, and is likely to include „green cars, green appliances, better insulation, more efficient lighting equipment, better public transport as well as biofuels, renewables and nuclear“. 

Such handouts will also „make the highly unpopular rescue package for the banks palatable to voters and make climate change policy acceptable,“ Egenhofer argues. Moreover, the author believes that „climate change may also become a primary source of revenue to solve the EU and other governments‘ fiscal problems“. 

„If emissions rights are auctioned – as is foreseen under the EU ETS – governments will be able to collect at least €30 billion annually from 2012 onwards,“ Egenhofer estimates, adding that this figure is „likely to rise each year until 2020 and could reach up to €90 billion annually“. 

Furthermore, „a growing number of individual states in the United States are also going down this route,“ the author observes, stating that „auction revenues from the cap-and-trade bills currently under discussion within the US Congress amount to between 7 and 15% of total US states‘ budgets“. 

Egenhofer concludes that „such calculations in themselves may be an important incentive for pressing on with climate change“.