The cabinet of Germany’s new Chancellor Olaf Scholz in the wake of a supplementary budget for this year has earmarked €60bn ($67.75bn) in unused credit authorisations for the country’s energy and climate fund, to ensure sufficient money for the energy transition despite a no-deficit rule.

The credit authorisations originally were part of a planned €240bn in new debt the former government of Chancellor Angela Merkel (with Scholz as finance minister) had pencilled into the budget to kick-start the economy after the Covid-19 pandemic, but not all of that volume has been called up.