2023 Author: Eric Donovan | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-05-21 15:44
According to Union parliamentary group leader Volker Kauder, gasoline prices have not yet peaked. Federal Environment Minister Sigmar Gabriel defended the planned tax introduction for biodiesel.
According to Union parliamentary group leader Volker Kauder, gasoline prices will rise again at the turn of the year due to the government's tax policy. Meanwhile, Federal Environment Minister Sigmar Gabriel (SPD) defended the introduction of a biodiesel tax at the weekend against opposition in the coalition as a “fair compromise between financial and environmental policy”.
Income must be right
Kauder told the magazine “Focus”: “The finance minister has declared that the obligation to add biofuel, including VAT, makes a liter of normal gasoline about 2 to 2.5 cents more expensive.” The government wants to reduce over-subsidies for biofuels and is referring to EU guidelines. From August onwards, taxes of 10 cents per liter for pure biodiesel and 15 cents for biodiesel and vegetable oil will be levied for the first time. The biofuels mixed with normal gasoline are to be fully taxed from 2007 onwards. At the same time, an admixture requirement is introduced.
Kauder said: "You can talk again about whether biodiesel has to be taxed at eight or ten cents per liter - but the income has to be right." Gabriel also said: "The last word has not yet been said about the level of taxation." Permanent tax privileges for pure biofuels would be too much for the finance minister and would be the wrong strategy. “These fuels are greatly overestimated. They are also not the best in ecological terms. " It makes more sense to add biofuel to conventional fuel, he told the Braunschweiger Zeitung.
Important function for biofuels
From 2007 on, fuel manufacturers will have to add two percent ethanol and 4.4 percent biodiesel to conventional fuel. The Ministry of Finance warned that without the tax, the state would earn up to two billion euros less per year. Gabriel said the government wanted to get the oil companies to increase the proportion of biofuels to ten to 15 percent in the next few years. In the long term, the focus must be on second generation biofuels, in which biomass is liquefied. "This is the only way to really get a perspective away from oil."
