“No more empty promises” reads a huge white banner, “2035 a matter of will” on a smaller one. The politicians of the Munich City Council have to walk past the trellis of demands from the “Fridays for Future” movement this Wednesday morning. Municipal officer Kristina Frank is making rapid progress, Mayor Katrin Habenschaden (Greens) uses the opportunity shortly before the general assembly in the Showpalast in Fröttmaning to thank the demonstrators for their persistent commitment to climate protection. Green parliamentary group leader Florian Roth even claims to have stood with the mostly young activists for half an hour. Shortly thereafter, he wrote to the demonstrators on Twitter: “A strong tailwind for more climate protection – that’s why we’re using a climate billion in 2020-2026. They say we have to get faster. They’re right!”
No empty compromises: “Fridays for Future” welcomes the city councilors with a 60 meter long poster.
(Photo: Alessandra Schellnegger)
However, it will still be many hours before the city council has reached the crucial item on the agenda, which is about nothing less than a climate-neutral Munich by 2035. But the topic is already running through the debates early in the morning. “This year alone we are spending an additional one hundred million euros to achieve our self-imposed climate target for 2035,” said Mayor Dieter Reiter (SPD) in his keynote speech on the budget. A little later, in his function as co-referee for the city treasury, Roth emphasized: “We want to fight the human climate crisis.” “Almost one billion” euros have been reserved for this until 2026 alone. Addressing the opposition, especially the CSU parliamentary group, he says: They accuse the city hall coalition of exaggerating when it comes to climate protection. But “Climate protection costs money. No climate protection costs more than money!”
The day before, in the committee for climate and environmental protection, CSU city councilor Winfried Hardly criticized the basic decision on climate neutrality. The wording of the honorary climate council, which includes representatives from environmental organizations, scientists and economic experts and is supposed to advise the city council on climate issues, is “fundamentalism”. It is “megalomania and hubris” when Munich talks about saving the world. Mayor Katrin habenschaden “expressly” defended herself against attacks on the climate council. This had succeeded in “delivering a well-founded opinion”.
But what is it actually about? After an initial policy decision last summer, in which the city council laid down an urban climate strategy and also endorsed climate statutes, policy decision II for a climate-neutral Munich now shows around 250 specific decisions on how CO2 emissions in the city can be significantly reduced . The process was accompanied by the Öko-Institut Freiburg, the Hamburg Institute and Intraplan Consult, which prepared scientific reports on behalf of the city. The conclusion of the experts: It will be difficult to achieve the planned climate neutrality. But Munich has the advantage over other cities in Germany of being able to generate climate-neutral geothermal energy on a large scale.
The target set by 2035 cannot be achieved without the economy
In return, however, the rapidly increasing demand for electricity in the future must be covered in as CO2-neutral a manner as possible. Photovoltaics alone are to be increased to 800 megawatts in 2035. Not only the municipal roofs, but also private buildings should be used for this. There will also be a photovoltaic umbrella agency whose employees will actively approach property owners. Stadtwerke München should also invest in renewable energies outside of the city area in order to achieve a balanced climate balance, at least in mathematical terms. However, this also requires a consistent turnaround in traffic with the rapid expansion of local public transport and the avoidance of private transport in the city as far as possible.
In order to achieve climate neutrality by 2035, however, the Munich economy must also be brought on board. So far there have only been appeals to companies to work on the climate and transport turnaround. ÖDP city councilor Nicola Holtmann is therefore “important that it is not done by halves”. For the SPD parliamentary group leader Anne Hübner, a significantly more efficient public transport is also important for achieving the climate goal: “If everything stays the way it is, then everything will get worse: traffic, the climate and, crucially, the quality of life of the people.”