The German Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Energy has rejected calls to introduce legislation to expand the carbon pricing system to the non ETS-sectors such as buildings, transportation and heating in the current legislative period, i.e. until at least 2021. Such policies has been ruled out as the government is only studying various options for the moment. This means that for the time being, there will be no carbon pricing outside of the electricity sector for the next two years.
The subject is controversial and other CO2 pricing scheme proposals have been rejected recently, in particular the idea of a new pricing scheme for CO2 emissions to support climate protection targets that was put forward by the Environment Ministry in November 2018.
The EU ETS system is meant to mitigate climate change by reducing emissions from more than 11,000 installations in the EU power sector and energy-intensive industries, involving a market-based cap and trade system forcing companies to buy allowances in order to emit carbon. It sets a cap on a total amount of certain greenhouse gases that can be emitted by installations covered by the scheme.