No sooner has the coalition agreed on the cornerstones of the heating law than the German climate protection law is being weakened. The responsible Federal Ministry of Economics submitted a corresponding draft law to the internal government vote on Wednesday. The cabinet is expected to come up with it next week.
The previous targets for individual sectors, such as transport, industry, buildings or the energy sector, have been deleted from the draft, as have the emergency programs that were previously linked to them. Instead, an “annual emission total” should be the decisive indicator in the future, and it has to shrink from year to year. This relieves the burden on Volker Wissing’s (FDP) Ministry of Transport, which has so far lagged hopelessly behind its goals. It is true that the areas with the greatest misconduct should continue to contribute “particularly” to climate protection. However, the draft does not become more specific. In the future, the Federal Government also intends to focus more on estimates of future emissions. Once a year, the Federal Environment Agency is to present a report on the probable development of emissions over the next few years.
The Ministry of Economics presented an initial projection on Wednesday, according to which there have been “significant progress in climate protection policy” since 2021, the year of the change of government. With the measures that have been decided so far, the gap in climate protection can be closed by 70 percent. With other planned projects, you can even get to 80 percent. These measures, in turn, can be found in a “Climate Protection Program 2023”, which has been controversial for months and is now also being voted on by the departments. It lists projects for all different areas that are intended to advance climate protection, from climate protection agreements in industry to research into synthetic fuels to the protection of near-natural beech forests. However, it is difficult to quantify in detail whether the individual projects actually bring about the hoped-for reductions.
With the drafts, the House of Minister Robert Habeck (Greens) is implementing an agreement made by the coalition committee at the end of March – the night-time top meeting that also paved the way for the heating law. At that time, the amendment to the climate protection law was also passed, very much at the urging of the FDP. “The ability to act on climate policy had been badly damaged in the last few weeks and months,” Habeck admitted on Wednesday. That’s over now. A “complete trend reversal” has been initiated. “We have brought the ship Deutschland back on course.”
Environmentalists see this more critically, they fear less commitment in environmental protection. With the abolition of the sector targets, the “principle of organized irresponsibility is moving into German climate policy,” says Sascha Müller-Kraenner, head of German environmental aid. The Ministry of Economy rejects this. “The reform must not emit a ton more CO₂ than with the previous law,” says a ministry paper.