Wednesday, December 29, 2021
“There will be frustration and anger”
Habeck: Will hardly achieve climate protection targets in 2022
Climate protection should be promoted with the Greens in the federal government, but initially, according to Economics Minister Habeck, the goals set will probably be missed. That is because of the deficit in Germany. The structural change will come – and it will generate a lot of resentment.
The new Minister of Economic Affairs, Robert Habeck, anticipates that Germany will not achieve the goals of the Climate Protection Act for the time being. “We will probably still miss our targets for 2022, even for 2023 it will be difficult enough,” said Habeck in an interview with “Zeit”. “We’re starting with a drastic backlog.” Regarding the goal of the new federal government to obtain 80 percent of electricity from renewable energies by the end of the decade, Habeck said: “It took us 30 years to get a 42 percent share. Now we have a good eight years to get that Get doubles. “
The Climate Protection Act defines measures with which Germany is to become greenhouse gas neutral by 2045. Part of the law are binding sector targets to reduce CO2 emissions by 2030, which set a maximum amount of emissions for each economic sector. It is further reduced every year.
Regarding the question of how the sector targets in transport should be adhered to, he said with regard to Transport Minister Volker Wissing: “There are measures that are not excluded in the coalition agreement, which the Transport Minister will definitely introduce.” The coalition agreement between the SPD, the Greens and the FDP offers “many opportunities” to make improvements in the future, should the individual sectors such as transport, agriculture or even energy fail to meet their CO2 reduction targets, explained Habeck. All ministries have the “common will” to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees as possible compared to pre-industrial times and thus to mitigate the effects of climate change.
Habeck reckons that the structural change caused by the new federal government’s climate policy will lead to frustration among the population: “New jobs will be created, we won’t run out of work, on the contrary,” said the Greens leader of “Zeit”. “But this goes hand in hand with the fact that old jobs in coal mining, for example, will disappear or change, and that can be bitter news individually or for regions. So there will also be disappointment and perhaps anger, I am not under any illusions.”
“There is an implicit wind power requirement”
In view of the increase in renewable energies in the electricity mix specified in the Climate Protection Act in Germany, there is “an implicit wind power requirement,” said the politician. In Germany, an average of 1,000 to 1,500 wind turbines would have to be built a year in order to achieve the goal of 80 percent electricity from renewable energies by 2030. “In the last few years, however, there have been little more than 450.” The expansion should gain momentum through faster approval processes. “We want to have all laws on the accelerated approval of wind turbines ready by the end of next year.”
Habeck contradicted the assessment that the nuclear phase-out by the end of 2022 would be a mistake. A politician who calls for the reconstruction of atomic energy “would then have to say that I would like to have the nuclear waste repository in my constituency. As soon as someone says that, I will deal with the subject again.” He does not see that the anti-nuclear consensus in Germany is weakening.