Linke on climate and energy

The Left wants low-cost base rates for average use of electricity and heating energy, while higher use costs more. This is to be funded temporarily by a surcharge on the rich. Electricity and gas shutoffs are to be banned.

Power and heating should be cheap for normal use. People who use more pay more. Rich people should pay an extra tax for a while to fund this. Nobody should have their power or gas cut off.

The base rates are meant to give quick relief to people with low incomes, families and small businesses while still encouraging saving. To pay for it, the party calls for an "energy solidarity surcharge" on income tax and capital gains tax until market prices stay below the price cap. Electricity and gas shutoffs would be outlawed. A fund is to cover heating costs without red tape when tenants cannot pay. The party wants to reform the electricity market so that affordable power for all is the goal.

The Left wants to pay every person 320 euros a year in Klimageld (climate dividend) directly, retroactive to the start of 2025. This is meant to offset the rising carbon price in a socially fair way.

Every person should get 320 euros of climate money per year. The state pays it out directly. It should make up for higher costs from the carbon price. People with little money should benefit most.

The party accuses the previous coalition of failing to deliver the promised compensation despite rising carbon prices. The payment would be 320 euros per person per year, applying from January 1, 2025. Citing Greenpeace, the platform says this can be paid from carbon pricing revenue. The payment would be taxable, so small and medium incomes benefit more. In the future the amount is to track the carbon price.

The Left wants to give the federal Climate and Transformation Fund 65 billion euros a year. It is to pay for storage technology, hydrogen, an industrial electricity price and aid for auto suppliers, among other things.

The federal government has a fund for climate protection. The Left wants to make it bigger. It should get 65 billion euros every year. The money is for storage, hydrogen and cheaper power for industry. Suppliers to the car industry should get help too.

The plan includes start-up funding for new battery and storage technologies and money for hydrogen where no practical alternative exists. An industrial electricity price is to support energy-intensive companies during the conversion. A 20 billion euro rescue package is planned for auto industry suppliers. Climate protection contracts are to provide extra support for climate-friendly production plants. At EU level, the Left wants to change state aid law and win more exemptions.

The Left wants Germany to become climate neutral by 2040. To get there, binding targets and emission limits are to apply, and the sector targets in the Climate Protection Act are to be restored.

Germany should be climate neutral by 2040. That means the country no longer harms the climate. There should be fixed limits on emissions. Each area such as transport or buildings gets its own target again.

The current Climate Protection Act sets climate neutrality for 2045. The program accuses the previous coalition government of weakening climate protection by abolishing the sector targets. Corporations are to be given clear rules, and a carbon price is only to exist with social compensation through a climate payment. The switch to renewable energy is to happen as fast as possible, with lower energy use. The Left also wants to restrict illuminated advertising and ban ads for especially climate-damaging products such as SUVs, cruises and flights.

The Left wants to lower electricity prices by cutting the electricity tax to the EU minimum, restructuring grid fees and ending the system in which expensive fossil power plants set the price for the whole market. Income-based rates and a ban on power and gas cutoffs are added.

Electricity should become cheaper. The Left wants to cut the tax on electricity sharply. Expensive power plants should no longer set the price for all electricity. There should be cheap rates for normal use. Nobody should have their power or gas cut off.

The program rejects the merit order principle as it works today, under which the most expensive plant needed sets the exchange price; windfall profits are to be ruled out or skimmed off. Power producers and international electricity trading are to share in transport costs, and flexible industrial demand is to be rewarded. According to the program, this could cut the price by up to 9 cents per kilowatt-hour in the short term, equal to 315 euros per household a year. Also planned are low base rates for average electricity and heating use, a social climate payment and an energy surcharge on the rich.

The Left rejects the European emissions trading system for heating and transport (ETS-2). It is to be replaced by binding climate targets, emission limits, and funding and infrastructure programs.

In the EU, CO2 from heating and driving will soon get a market price. The Left does not want this. It wants fixed limits on emissions. The state should pay to support the changes.

In the program's view, a legally regulated framework in these areas delivers more social fairness and a faster ecological conversion than a price. One reason given is that tenants cannot replace their heating systems themselves. As a general rule, there is to be no carbon price without compensation through a climate payment.

The Left wants to make climate protection and adaptation to climate impacts a joint task of the federal government, states and municipalities, and to strengthen disaster protection. Countries of the Global South are to receive far more money for climate protection and climate damage.

The federal government, states and towns should work together on climate. They should prepare for floods, heat and drought. Disaster protection should get better. Poor countries should get much more money for climate protection.

Investment is to go into preparing for floods, flash floods, heat waves and droughts. According to the program, hardly anything has been done on climate adaptation so far. The Left considers the pledges made at the world climate conference in November 2024 far too low. The aid is not to push recipient countries further into debt and is not to be counted against development funds.

The Left wants to transfer electricity, heating and gas grids into public ownership. The state and municipalities are to take a large part in expanding renewable energy, and heating networks are to be barred from making profits.

The grids for electricity, heat and gas should belong to the state or the towns. The state should build many wind and solar plants itself. Nobody should make a profit from heating networks. Energy should not belong to big corporations.

Municipalities are to get a fund for buying back grids, and decentralized solutions get priority funding. Through public participation in the expansion, the Left wants to bring large parts of energy production back and locate wind turbine and solar factories in Germany again. Supply is to rest with municipal utilities, cooperatives and citizens; storage technology for self-suppliers is to be subsidized. The price of heat is not to exceed the actual cost of producing it. Cities and towns are to get support for expanding local and district heating.

The Left wants a solar mandate for new buildings and for existing buildings after a major roof renovation. Municipalities are to receive a bonus for new wind and solar plants and higher mandatory payments from operators.

New buildings should get solar panels on the roof. This also applies to old buildings after a big roof renovation. Towns get money when wind turbines or solar plants are built there. This way local people benefit.

The mandate is to apply where it is structurally feasible and worthwhile, especially on commercial roofs; funding is to be expanded and permitting simplified. Municipalities are to get 25,000 euros per megawatt of capacity of a new wind turbine or large solar plant, including when old plants are replaced. Operators' payments to host municipalities are to become mandatory, extend to existing plants and rise from 0.2 to 0.5 cents per kilowatt-hour fed in.

The Left wants to write the nuclear phase-out into the constitution and end the production of uranium fuel in Gronau and Lingen. Public money is to be pulled out of fossil and nuclear energy companies.

The Left wants no more nuclear power. This should be written into the constitution. The uranium fuel factories in Gronau and Lingen should close. The state should not invest money in nuclear, coal or gas companies.

Corporations are to bear the long-term costs of the nuclear industry. In the search for a final waste repository, there are to be broad rights to participate and sue at every stage. In the EU taxonomy, which defines sustainable investments, the positive rating of nuclear power and gas is to be removed. The Left calls for a Europe-wide plan to shut down nuclear plants; the state development bank KfW is not to finance nuclear plants abroad. The withdrawal of public money is to include pension reserves and pension funds.

The Left wants to complete the coal phase-out by 2030 and then phase out the burning of natural gas. A gas phase-out act is to set a binding path; electricity from natural gas is to end by 2035.

Germany should stop burning coal by 2030. After that, natural gas should end too. There should be a law with a fixed plan for this. By 2035, no electricity should come from natural gas. Affected workers should be protected.

Under current law, the coal phase-out is planned for 2038 at the latest. In the program's view, emissions trading alone is not enough to reach the 2030 goal. Federal and state funding for former lignite regions is to continue and be adjusted for inflation and new needs. Existing power plant sites are to stay in use, for example for large-scale storage, and remain as locations for skilled workers and training.

The Left wants no new permanent infrastructure for natural gas and liquefied gas, a fracking ban and an import ban on fracked liquefied gas. It rejects underground CO2 storage as a climate solution, and hydrogen is to be used only where it is indispensable.

No new permanent facilities should be built for natural gas. Fracking should be banned. Fracking is a risky way to get gas out of the ground. Gas from fracking should not come into the country. CO2 should not be stored underground. Hydrogen should only be used where nothing else works.

The program rejects levy-funded support for new gas power plants as harmful to the climate and socially unfair. It regards storing carbon dioxide underground (CCS) as risky. Using captured CO2 as a material (CCU) is only to be subsidized in industrial conversion if it is proven that no CO2-free process exists. Hydrogen is to be reserved mainly for industrial production and, in the long run, produced solely with renewable electricity.

The Left calls for 25 billion euros a year for energy-saving renovations and replacing heating systems. Subsidies are to be scaled by income so that low- and middle-income households face no extra burden.

The state should give 25 billion euros every year for renovations and new heating. People with low incomes get their new heating fully paid. People with middle incomes get part of it. Very rich people pay for it themselves.

For low incomes, up to 100 percent of the extra costs are to be covered. As an example, the program names a refund of 82 percent for a single-person household earning 30,000 euros a year and 42 percent at 60,000 euros; from 250,000 euros there is no subsidy. Nationwide advice from renovation officers and more involvement of citizens, tenant groups and environmental groups in municipal heat planning are planned. The program accuses the previous coalition's heating law of having ignored people's concerns.

The Left wants to rebuild cities in response to global warming and make climate adaptation and disaster protection a standard public task. The platform points to heat and water shortages, which especially affect children, older people and outdoor workers.

Summers are getting hotter. That is dangerous for health. So the Left wants to rebuild cities. There should be more parks, gardens and drinking fountains.

The plan includes more parks, green spaces, allotment and community gardens, public toilets and water dispensers. Buildings and surfaces would be greened more, and sealed ground opened up. Cities are to become sponge cities that absorb rainwater and be better protected against floods. Changed spatial planning is meant to improve air exchange with the surrounding countryside.