Status: 08/19/2021 5:46 p.m.
According to a report by the Ministry of the Environment, Germany will clearly miss its climate targets. Without further measures, CO2 emissions will only decrease by 49 percent instead of 65 percent by 2030. Climate neutrality by 2045 is also on the brink.
Without additional efforts, Germany will clearly miss its climate targets for both 2030 and 2040. This is the conclusion of the 2021 projection report of the Federal Environment Ministry, from whose draft the “Handelsblatt” quotes. The paper is therefore still being coordinated by departments.
According to the report, emissions would decrease 49 percent by 2030 compared to 1990 levels. The current climate protection law stipulates a minus 65 percent. A reduction of only 67 percent is predicted for 2040, far below the 88 percent reduction in emissions prescribed by the Climate Protection Act. The efforts made to date in climate protection are therefore unlikely to be sufficient to achieve the goals that we have set ourselves.
Some factors are not taken into account
For the projection, all measures that had been decided so far at the end of August 2020 were taken into account, including the federal government’s 2030 climate protection program and measures from the 2020 economic stimulus package not even the significant increase in certificate prices in the European emissions trading system ETS since the beginning of the year.
However, the report already assumes that 8.4 million electric cars will be registered in Germany by 2030. The installed wind power capacity on land will have increased from currently around 54 gigawatts to 71 gigawatts by then, and the installed photovoltaic capacity from currently 54 gigawatts to 100 gigawatts. The experts also assume that the CO2 price in the transport and building sectors will be 125 euros in 2030 and will rise to 275 euros per tonne of carbon dioxide emitted by 2040. Currently the price is 25 euros per ton.
Publication delayed
The 2021 projection report was created on behalf of the Federal Environment Agency (UBA) for the federal government by the Öko-Institut, the Fraunhofer Institute for System and Innovation Research (ISI), the Institute for Resource Efficiency and Energy Strategies (IREES) and the Thünen Institute. According to the Climate Protection Act, the climate protection projection report must be submitted every two years.
Actually, it should have been forwarded to the Bundestag in March, but its publication has been delayed for months. The Ministry of the Environment rejected allegations that the report was deliberately withheld – possibly because of the upcoming general election.