Understanding and offsetting undue hardship
For companies that heavily depend on fuels subject to the nEHS CO2 pricing, the prospective cost burden may occasionally result in undue hardship in certain non-typical cases, at least in the nEHS introductory phase up to 2026.
The ‘Directive on granting equity payment for financial offsetting to companies to prevent undue hardship caused by the introduction of nEHS under the Fuel Emissions Trading Act’ (BEHG Hardship Compensation) was issued to avoid disproportionate financial burdens to companies indirectly affected by the introduction of the BEHG. This directive enables financial compensation to offset undue economic burdens.
Companies that are obligated parties as per BEHG are excluded.
The directive on granting the BEHG Hardship Compensation of 17/07/2023 was published in the electronic Federal Gazette on 26/07/2023 (BAnz A 26/07/2023 B1).
Legal framework (available in German only)
Bekanntmachung im Bundesanzeiger: BEHG-Härtefallkompensation (BAnz AT 26.07.2023 B1)
Brennstoffemissionshandelsgesetz (BEHG)
Basics of the application procedure
In accordance with section 6.1.2 sentence 1 BEHG hardship compensation, applications for the 2023 settlement year must be submitted to us by 31/07/2024 at the latest. If you miss the deadline, your application will be rejected.
Various application documents are available for you to submit your application, which you can download below on this website. The updated guidelines and application forms take into account the extended scope of application of the BEHG since 01/01/2023.
In addition to the PDF application form, all applicants must also submit the Excel application form. If the applicant company is affiliated with other companies, the PDF supplementary form ‘Affiliated companies’ must also be submitted in order to obtain more detailed information on the structure of the group of companies and possible deposit obligations.
The application must be accompanied by an audit opinion from the auditor (applies to all applicant types) and, for large and medium-sized corporations, a supplementary audit report from the auditor (hereinafter referred to as the audit body). The audit office prepares its audit opinion on the basis of the audit findings and the audit opinion in the ‘Audits’ worksheet of the Excel application form. The ‘Examinations’ worksheet is therefore considered an integral part of the audit report and is attached to it as a PDF. For the information provided by the applicant (as an affiliated company) in the PDF supplementary form ‘Affiliated companies’ on affiliated companies subject to liability, an expert opinion must be prepared and submitted by the Panel.
Electronic communication
Applications must be submitted in an electronic form and using the templates provided by us, the German Emissions Trading Authority at the German Environment Agency, via the Virtual Post Office (VPS) with a qualified electronic signature in accordance with the general ruling of the German Environment Agency (UBA) of 27/07/2023, which was published on 10/08/2023 (BAnz AT 10/08/2023 B7). Please refer to our linked topic page on electronic communication.
We recommend all applicants to apply for a qualified signature card as soon as possible as this may take some time.
Legal framework (available in German only)
Guideline and application documents
Further explanations on how to apply, how to fill in the application forms as well as templates for the verification note, the verification report and the expert opinion can be found in our guideline ‘BEHG Hardship Compensation’.
