Germany appears to abandon CO2 tax following Wednesday meeting-Der Spiegel

German government appears to have abandoned a planned carbon dioxide tax on coal plants following a Wednesday meeting:
 
6/6/15, "Environmental policy: Sigmar Gabriel provides air delivery for grabs," Der Spiegel, Sigmar Gabriel, google translation from German

"Economy Minister Gabriel: meeting with unions and energy giants."
 
"The planned CO _{2 tax} for fossil fuel power plants threatens at least partially to fail. This is the result of a meeting on Wednesday of German Economics Minister Sigmar Gabriel (SPD) with the head of the mining union IG BCE, Michael Vassiliadis, and the ministers of those states, where lignite is promoted. (This message comes from the mirror. The new edition can be found here. )

The plan of the house of Gabriel originally provided in addition to prevent 22 million tonnes of CO _2-2020. By contrast, oppose trade unions thus see that the lignite production in Germany as a whole at risk and energy companies. These interest groups seem to have now enforced.
 
In the round, they agreed on a set of other measures, including the promotion of cogeneration. Would tip the climate change levy, which would be a bitter defeat for the green state in the Federal Ministry of Economics, Rainer Baake who has strongly promoted the project. On Tuesday, the round should meet again to complete the debate definitively.
 
The federal government had before actually appear to entail electricity suppliers from the year after next higher taxes on _CO2 emissions. In this way the German climate targets to be achieved. The previous plan according to which the levy should those power plants, which are readily over 20 years old." via Junk Science, via GWPF
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Germany's Gabriel in 2012 wasn't against coal:
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8/16/2012, "Magical Thinking in Germany" Roger Pielke, Jr., Breakthrough Institute  .

"Back in 2009 I shared the following comments from Sigmar Gabriel, then German energy minister. Germany’s environment minister Sigmar Gabriel (Social Democratic Party) is pushing for the construction of new coal-fired power plants in Germany. “We need eight to twelve new coal plants if we want to get out of nuclear energy,” Gabriel said on Friday at a meeting of the Mainz-Wiesbaden AG (KMW) in Mainz. With regard to the opponents of the planned coal-fired power in Mainz, the minister said: “Those who demonstrate against coal-fired power will get nuclear power plants instead.” Gabriel said, the decision about which power plants are built is the responsibility of companies and not politics. He added that new coal power plants would not increase carbon dioxide emissions.

First of all, old plants would be closed. In addition, the emissions trading scheme would limit the level of emissions. “You can build 100 coal-fired power plants and don’t have to have higher CO2 emissions,” said the environment minister. Renewable energies would not be able to close the gap in energy supply that will arise due to the shutdown of nuclear power plants by 2020, said Gabriel. Even gas-fired power plants are not a real alternative because their power generation is expensive and thus not competitive for the energy supply of industrial production."...

 


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