The scandal surrounding fake climate protection projects in China threatens to put a strain on the municipal transport transition in Germany. The Association of German Transport Companies (VDV) warned that the fall in prices in greenhouse gas quota trading would mean that transport companies would lose an important source of revenue.
This makes it more difficult to convert urban bus fleets to electric drive, a VDV spokesman told WELT AM SONNTAG: “Now that the revenue is not coming in and the federal government has stopped its funding, the transport companies are left with twice the costs.”
In May, it became known that numerous climate protection projects in Chinese gas and oil production were merely fake. Mineral oil companies had acquired CO₂ reduction certificates in good faith and had them counted towards meeting their greenhouse gas reduction quota in Germany. The President of the Federal Environment Agency, Dirk Messner, spoke of a possible “web of fraud”.
Due to the inclusion of so-called Upstream Emission Reductions (UER) from China, the mineral oil industry’s demand for other options for meeting its GHG quota has fallen. This includes the inclusion of electric buses. In the past, this has brought in up to 13,000 euros per bus per year, according to the VDV. With the falling revenues for the quotas, the transport companies can now only generate a fraction of the planned revenues. “This naturally has an impact on the financial situation of the companies.”
The Nuremberg Municipal Utilities (STWN) announced that they received GHG bonuses for 65 electric buses last year. “The bonus per kilowatt hour achieved in 2023 was 30 percent lower than in 2022,” a spokeswoman explained. “The total bonus achieved is a not insignificant value that significantly reduces the total cost of charging current.” Overall, the rate is declining, which is regrettable “because the income benefits our bus operations and thus the general public.”