The German government has placed climate protection at the top of its priorities for the current legislative period. The war in Ukraine has not changed this – on the contrary: the phase-out of fossil fuels is now even more urgent than before. As the leading instrument of German climate policy, CO2 pricing can make a decisive contribution to climate protection if it is consistently developed further and designed in the interests of consumers.
Against this backdrop, the authors of the policy brief recommend, among other things, that the revenues from CO2 pricing be redistributed to consumers as extensively as possible. This would provide a net relief for people from the lower income groups, which should significantly increase the acceptance of CO2 pricing as an instrument of climate protection.
The results of the study are based on a representative telephone survey (CATI) on, among other things, environmental knowledge and behavior, which was conducted in the fall of 2020 with around 1,100 respondents by infas institute for applied social sciences. Current data on the acceptance of CO2 pricing in April 2022 come from the COMPASS online survey conducted by infratest dimap with around 2,000 respondents.
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