Meaningful “limited”: Report: Germany could miss climate targets

“Limited” meaningfulness
Report: Germany could miss climate targets

Following the ruling by the Federal Constitutional Court, the government is tightening the Climate Protection Act. But a new report by the Ministry of the Environment shows that Germany would miss these goals with the existing measures. However, there are some gaps in the projection.

The “Projection Report 2021” on the expected climate protection progress in Germany is now publicly available. The Federal Environment Ministry announced. Svenja Schulze’s department had already published a draft of the report in August following relevant media reports.

According to the projection report, Germany would clearly miss its climate targets for 2030 and 2040. According to the report, which has been publicly available since Friday and which the German government has to submit to the EU Commission, the total greenhouse gas emissions will be reduced by 49 percent between 1990 and 2030 and a reduction of 67 percent by 2040. Potential CO2 sinks such as forests and moors are not taken into account in the aforementioned projection.

All in all, Germany would therefore lag far behind what the federal government’s climate protection law, which was only renewed in May, stipulated. Accordingly, greenhouse gas emissions would have to fall by 65 percent by 2030 and by 88 percent by 2040.

Not all measures taken into account

In its communication on the report that has now been published, the Federal Environment Ministry again points out that the analysis “only takes into account the climate protection measures adopted by August 31, 2020” and that the informative value is “limited” by the early reference date.

“Projections cannot depict real dynamic developments, but are methodologically based on framework data and assumptions,” it continues. Since the end of August 2020, “in national and international climate protection, decisions of great importance have been passed that the report cannot depict”. The “sharply increased certificate price in European emissions trading (ETS)” is not taken into account in the calculation. In the report, a price of 30 euros will be assumed for the year 2030, writes the ministry. The certificate price is now already at 60 euros.

The report names, among other things, the decline in coal-fired power generation, CO2 pricing through EU emissions trading and the expansion of renewable energies as “important drivers” for the reduction of greenhouse gases.

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