Germany has taken seriously the warning issued a few days ago by its Constitutional Court. The Climate Change Act, passed in 2019, is unambitious and shifts the burden of the harmful effects of climate change to future generations, the judges concluded in a landmark ruling for environmental protection.
Chancellor Angela Merkel showed her support towards the Court’s decision and announced the amendment of the new law. Germany will bring forward by five years one of the most ambitious goals: climate neutrality, which means to emit only the amount of greenhouse gases that nature is capable of absorbing. So far, Germany had set this target for 2050. The new law, which will be passed in a matter of weeks, will set this to happen in 2045.
Towards the New Lifestyle
The intermediate target of reducing polluting emissions by 2030 is also much more ambitious than the one recently agreed by the European Union to be included in the future climate law. Germany expects the cut to be 65% compared to the 55% agreed with the European partners, and this will be included in German law. Right after the Constitutional Court issued the climate law, Merkel’s Executive was announced. Also, in the middle of the election campaign, in which the Chancellor is not running for the first time in 16 years, and the polls predict an excellent result for the Greens. The climate change battle is one of the main campaign issues of all the major German parties.
“With this law, we are creating more intergenerational equity, greater planning certainty, and decisive climate action that does not stifle industry, but rather restructures and modernizes it,” Environment Minister Svenja Schulze told a press conference after the Executive meeting. Schulze explained that reducing emissions up to 2030 will have to be borne by the energy and industrial sectors, which produce the largest amounts of greenhouse gases. The promotion of renewable energy will be the main focus of the new strategy because it is the technology that should replace fossil fuels very soon.
Germany has been able to reduce its emissions by over 40% compared to 1990. In absolute values, Europe’s largest economy emitted 722 million tons of CO₂ last year, 80 million less than the previous year, but at least two-thirds of that decline is attributed to the pandemic. For the very first time, the country produced more electricity from wind power than coal last year, after several fiscal years. As a result of the gradual shutdown of nuclear power, this polluting energy source rebounded.
Old Times vs. Future
Germany has decided not to wait to implement the agreements agreed at the Council of Europe and to go ahead and pass its own law. Adjustments could be made later, said a spokesman for Schulze’s ministry. No time can be lost in the fight against climate change, the minister stressed on several occasions during her appearance. Germany’s targets are more ambitious than those of the EU-27. However, it hasn’t reached the United Kingdom’s, which recently announced that:
- They will be able to reduce emissions by 68% by 2030,
- They plan to have a 78% reduction by 2035.
Boris Johnson’s Executive plans to set these commitments by law in June 2021.
The new German climate law seeks to preserve and expand natural greenhouse gas sinks needed to offset emissions from livestock farming and certain industrial processes. The improvement is to be completed by 2050. These sinks will help process more greenhouse gases than what is emitted by the country as a whole. The regulation states the Council of Experts on Climate Change should submit a report every two years to assess progress in achieving the targets.
The legislation is accompanied by a budget of 8 billion euros which, among other things, will be used to finance improvements in the energy efficiency of buildings. A novelty of the new regulation will be that property owners will have to bear 50% of the costs generated by the energy consumption of homes because they decide what reforms are made in the houses that require any form of energy use and extraction. “The Climate Change Act sets the framework for the coming years and decades,” said Schulze. “Numerical data helps us measure progress, but at the end of the day, it’s irrelevant. What’s truly important is how we want to live our lives in the future, how we plan to produce goods, generate energy, and travel. All of this has an effect on different policy areas. In the future, all ministries will have to consider the climate within their agendas,” she added.
Greenpeace believes that the new law will balance the burden of greenhouse gas reduction between present and future generations. Studies done by experts show that:
- By 2030, Germany will have exhausted 91% of its carbon budget.
- By 2045, it will be 32% overrun.
In case the executive wants to comply with the Constitutional Court’s ruling, the reduction target for polluting gases should be at least 70% by 2030 to achieve climate neutrality by 2040, said Lisa Göldner, the organization’s climate expert.
