Calendar week 34: Funds that are urgently needed to shape the transition to a future worth living are not being accessed from funding pots, criticises Aysel OsmanogluBoard Member of GLS Bank and Editor-in-Chief of Climate reporter°Private capital must now also be mobilised for this purpose.
Aysel Osmanoglu. (Image: Martin Steffen)
Every Sunday: The members of our editorial board take turns to talk about what was important to them in the past week. Today: Aysel Osmanoglu, CEO of GLS Bank.
Climate reporter°: Ms. Osmanoglu, the traffic light coalition finally submitted the 2025 budget to the Bundestag this week. The billion-euro “gap” has been closed – also at the expense of the Climate and Transformation Fund.
Energy industry boss Andreae criticises the fact that due to global underspending and overspending of twelve billion euros, only two thirds of the budget is now reliably available in the fund for 2025. Do you agree with the criticism?
Aysel Osmanoglu: I do not want to judge whether and to what extent the budget is divided up. I consider the calculation of the “global expenditure reduction” to be challenging.
Behind this lies the institutionalization of a grievance: urgently needed funds are not being accessed via the created infrastructure of the funding pots. There is incredible potential in these. Why are these subsidies not being used? We need investments to shape the transition to a future worth living for the economy and society.
Public funds will not be enough to achieve this, so additional efforts are needed to mobilize private capital. This is what we, along with many other alternative banks, are focusing on as GLS Bank.
I would like to see an equally concentrated effort on public funds at the political level. A pot that has “transformation” in its name should also transform. To do this, companies and initiatives need better access. If the funds are not used, the funding structure needs to be adjusted.
A previously withheld study for the Federal Ministry of Economics quantifies the concrete CO2 impact of subsidies for the first time. According to this study, the diesel and company car privilege, the travel allowance, financial aid for industrial electricity and the VAT reduction for animal products will result in additional emissions totaling around 150 million tons of CO2 by 2030. Why is Germany not making progress in reducing climate-damaging subsidies?
It always hurts when privileges are lost. This affects companies as well as private individuals. At the same time, we are in a dynamic of change. No matter how valuable the work of individual sectors that have made important contributions over the past decades may be, they provide few answers to today’s questions.
That is why their influence should be limited in the future. Because that is what is at stake: our future. How can we achieve these changes in a socially and ecologically acceptable way?
Now we have the chance to help shape these changes. If we stick to our fossil structures, change will still come – but shaping it will be more difficult.
The political scientist Lasse Thiele calls for the East German open-cast lignite mines to be socialized and for the mining companies to be effectively obliged to contribute sufficiently to the costs of restoring the landscape. At the same time, however, it is clear that the restoration of the open-cast mines is a task for the century and that the main costs must therefore be borne by the general public. How should we deal with this contradiction?
Since the proceeds up to this point have been skimmed off by the energy companies, their mandatory participation in the renaturation is obligatory. However, neither Leag nor Mibrag publish figures on the corresponding reserves.
Either we rely on the local population to deal responsibly with the damage they have caused and to make appropriate contributions. Historically, however, the chances of this happening are slim. The companies’ refusal to be transparent also leaves an impression.
Alternative solutions would be financing vehicles established in the form of a foundation or an association between municipalities and corporations. The corporations would be obliged to pay in funds that would be adjusted accordingly to the profitability of future income and necessary renaturation measures.
It is important to note that the corporations as a whole are held responsible for these payments – a separation in the form of planned insolvency proceedings for the individual companies must not mean that those responsible are exempt from liability.
And what was your surprise of the week?
I was surprised at how many banks were willing to finance the purchase of platform “X”. The loans have now lost a lot of value and have thus become a burden for the institutes.
We often talk about the term “true costs”i.e. consider the monetary cost factors that are not included in classic calculations, such as mining damage in East Germany, for example, which results in water pollution, climate impact costs and other costs that cannot yet be quantified.
In my opinion, spreading hate and false information also poses a major risk and leads to high costs. These cannot yet be analyzed using classic economics tools – but the “X” example shows unambiguously and in conventional accounting logic what happens if we ignore these risks.
Questions: Jörg Staude and David Zauner
