When it comes to climate protection, Prime Minister Markus Söder (CSU) definitely wants to be a role model. Bavaria should therefore already be climate-neutral by 2040, five years earlier than the federal government. That’s what Söder promised again and again That’s what the new Bavarian climate protection law says, which has been in force since the beginning of the year. The state government has set Söder an even more ambitious goal. According to the new law, the state chancellery and ministries have been climate-neutral since the beginning of 2023.
But it’s obviously not far from that. With the exception of the environment department, the ministries and the state chancellery do not even know how much CO₂ they are blowing into the atmosphere. The houses first have to calculate their carbon footprint. This emerges from the response of the state government to a request from the Greens member of parliament Patrick Friedl. Apart from the Ministry of the Environment, it is also unknown what measures the State Chancellery and ministries took last year to reduce their emissions of greenhouse gases.
“The state government wants to be climate-neutral by 2023, but is only just beginning to collect consumption data in the ministries,” says Friedl. “This is the official declaration of bankruptcy of our own climate protection efforts.”
After all, the Ministry of the Environment has been trying for years to reduce its own CO₂ emissions. According to the information, 630 tons of CO₂ were released in 2018, 582 in 2019 and 2020 – due to Corona – only 287 tons. Efforts are currently underway to further strengthen climate protection. The façade of the complex in Munich’s Arabellapark is currently being renovated. That alone should result in savings of almost 220 tons of CO₂ per year. The photovoltaic systems on the roof and on the facades are also being expanded. This is expected to result in a further saving of 130 tons of CO₂.
The Ministry of the Environment compensates for the difference that still remains in its climate balance. According to a spokesman, the house of Minister Thorsten Glauber (FW) has been purchasing so-called emission reduction certificates from the “Sichuan Household Biogas Program” in China since 2018. The program pays farming families in the province of the same name in the People’s Republic grants of up to 120 euros if they switch their heating systems from wood or coal to biogas from the dung of their livestock. Such a change can save two tons of CO₂ per household and year. According to the project homepage, the total savings amount to 800,000 tons of CO₂ per year.
The acquisition of such climate protection certificates is now quite common for companies, but also for government agencies. The federal government, for example, compensated for the climate impact of business trips by making payments to the same program. However, many climate protectionists have criticized the certificates as “modern selling indulgences”. So also from the Green politician Friedl. “Prime Minister Söder wants to be the top climate protector in the Free State, but doesn’t have to do anything for it, except maybe buy Chinese biogas certificates – of all things!” he says.
Friedl’s demand: If such compensation cannot be done without, then it should take place directly in Bavaria, for example by quickly rewetting the 221,000 hectares of moors in the Free State. “That alone would prevent up to five million tons of CO₂ emissions or about six percent of annual CO₂ emissions in Bavaria,” says the MP.
Apparently, the Ministry of the Environment already had this idea. “We are currently working on a Bavarian compensation platform,” says the spokesman. “This should first allow the ministries and later other authorities to support climate protection projects here in Bavaria as part of compensatory measures.”