Position on the Introduction of Carbon Pricing

Climate change is one of the biggest challenges that civil society and policymakers are facing today. In order to limit carbon dioxide emissions, international commitments to reduce CO2 were made in the Paris climate agreement in 2015.

At METRO, we firmly believe that climate reversal is a task for society as a whole. As a leading food wholesaler and retailer with worldwide operations, we are aware of our global climate policy responsibility.

That is why we have set ourselves very ambitious and challenging climate protection targets. According to current data, the climate protection targets set by Germany and the European Union for 2020 will not be achieved.

METRO's demand

We therefore call for a change of mindset in climate policy which, with practicable means and measures, will realistically allow the climate targets to be achieved.

In our opinion, the introduction of carbon pricing should be considered. The fact that METRO has already been operating successfully with an internal carbon price since last year shows that this is a good way of allocating projects towards the best possible CO2 reduction.

Design of the policy instrument

It will be necessary to discuss how such a climate policy instrument should be designed so that climate protection and efficient CO2 abatement are once again in the foreground, irrespective of sector affiliation and the energy source used.

At the same time, alongside the introduction of a carbon price, the opportunity should be seized to clean up overlapping and, so far, only partially successful energy policy instruments, so that the burdens of the energy transition are shared fairly and do not have to be borne by the end consumers and individual non-privileged economic sectors such as trade.