Fossils are, quite simply, petrifactions or remains of animals and plants. A fossil is also, if we take the figurative sense, a human being with antiquated and petrified ideas. And fossil fuels? From 2035 onwards, this should be the end of the cars on our streets, and from 2024 onwards in new heaters.
On a night when the coalition committee in Berlin is looking for the remains of common ground, the ARD Sunday talk show “Anne Will” deals with the “end of gas, oil, diesel and petrol”. And raises the question: “Does the traffic light have a plan for this?”
And the Porsche 911 rolls into the future
In Brussels, Germany’s Minister of Transport, Volker Wissing, has just put both feet on the brakes. He has certainly not achieved sympathy values for Germany. But: A back door seems to be opened in the planned ban on combustion engines from 2035 onwards, through which at least the Porsche 911 can roll into its future – fueled with e-fuels, for which Porsche driver and Finance Minister Christian Lindner has already announced the additional price wanting to absorb tax cuts.
“Germany,” says CDU politician Jens Spahn in the ARD Sunday talk, “has lost a lot of its reputation through this approach.” That is the opposition’s mandatory criticism of FDP Minister Volker Wissing. In his freestyle, Jens Spahn does not seem to be that far removed from Wissing. He also advocates openness to technology: “It would be wrong to ban other technologies – nobody knows what the technology will be like in five or ten years.”
50 percent of the exhaust only smokes elsewhere
In the discussion, the former CDU Minister of Health, Spahn, reminds us that driving a car is not necessarily environmentally friendly if there is no more smoke from the exhaust. “Over the course of a year, 50 percent of the electricity is produced from fossil fuels,” says Jens Spahn. Means: It just stinks somewhere else to high heaven. His solution? enable e-fuels.
When it came to the combustion engine, we were way ahead at one point. I think giving that up is a stupid decision.” It is not entirely surprising that the old Green Jürgen Trittin does not want to let things stand that way. The only surprise is how poisonous the former environment minister is. And he scoffs: “We were once at the front of the fax…”
Engineer: Basic error in traffic lights makes energy transition “very, very expensive”
Professor Lamia Messari-Becker, a specialist in civil engineering, has been invited to join the ARD group as a scientist. “E-fuels are an addition that we will need,” says Messari-Becker about car traffic. However, she expands the topic and speaks of an extremely electricity-focused energy transition by the government.
The specialist considers this to be a fundamental error: “There is no single solution. I can’t just power buildings, industry, transport. That won’t do. We need diversification. Openness to technology is what characterizes this country.”
“It will end up being very, very hard”
That sounds good. The path remains controversial. “There are also ways to be climate-neutral in conventional heating systems,” believes FDP man Konstantin Kuhle. And he laments a fundamental error in the discussion: “There are still no proposals on how to pay for all of this.”
The scientist Messari-Becker also has doubts as to whether the money used by taxpayers and car drivers, homeowners and renters is being used sensibly. “We are pushing the goals through a tight bottleneck,” says the professor and fears: “At the end of the day, we have achieved far less climate protection per euro invested.”
And she adds a sentence that will not take away people’s fears or make them smaller: “It will end up being very expensive and very, very hard.”
