The transport sector is far from meeting legal requirements for CO2 savings. This could have radical consequences for many citizens – or could it?
Comprehensive driving bans on weekends: Federal Transport Minister Volker Wissing frightened millions of drivers with this scenario. From the FDP politician’s point of view, only such drastic measures would help to meet climate targets in the transport sector and massively save greenhouse gases – if the law is not reformed soon.
However, negotiations on this reform are not making any progress in the traffic light coalition. That’s why Wissing’s collar burst. The goal: apply pressure. “I told the citizens the truth,” he said on Deutschlandfunk. The dispute draws attention to the major climate protection problems in transport.
What does the current climate protection law provide?
Germany’s climate protection goals are bindingly regulated in the law. It envisages that greenhouse gas emissions will be reduced by 65 percent by 2030 compared to 1990. Permissible annual emission levels have been set for individual sectors such as industry, energy, transport and buildings. The key point so far is the following mechanism: If sectors fail to meet the requirements, the responsible federal government departments have to take action with emergency programs.
Last year, the transport and building sectors missed the permitted annual emission levels. Next Monday, a council of experts on climate issues will present its assessment of the data. The responsible ministry must then submit an immediate program for the respective sector within three months – i.e. by July 15th.
What reform is planned?
The coalition is planning to reform the law – which would make an emergency program in transport obsolete. The FDP in particular wants the reform. Reason: What matters most is whether climate targets are met overall. FDP parliamentary group deputy Carina Konrad spoke of previous “unrealistic, rigid sector goals” that threatened to tie the country down.
The cabinet launched the reform in June. Accordingly, compliance with climate targets should no longer be checked retroactively by sector – but rather looking forward, over several years and across sectors. In the future, the government as a whole should decide in which sector and how the permissible total amount of CO2 should be achieved by 2030 – but only if the target is missed two years in a row.
Environmental groups warn against weakening the law. During the negotiations between the traffic light factions, it is said that it is controversial which responsibilities departments will have in the future – if CO2 targets are missed.
What is Wissing threatening?
Because the negotiations in the traffic light factions are not making progress, Wissing has now sounded the alarm. In order to achieve the sector goals for transport in 2024 alone, around 22 million tons of so-called CO2 equivalents would have to be saved on an ad hoc basis – unless the amended Climate Protection Act comes into force by July 15th, according to a letter from the minister to the traffic light faction leaders.
This would correspond, for example, to 15 percent of car mileage and over 10 percent of truck mileage. Such a reduction in traffic performance would “only be possible through restrictive measures that are difficult to communicate to the population, such as nationwide and indefinite driving bans on Saturdays and Sundays,” said Wissing. Not only would citizens suffer, supply chains could also be permanently disrupted, as a short-term shift in transport from road to rail would be unrealistic. In addition, driving bans would significantly impair acceptance of climate protection. The goals could not be achieved with other measures such as a speed limit.
What would driving bans look like?
The ministry derived an estimate of the amount of CO2 savings through driving bans – but what exactly these would have to look like remained unclear. Would this only affect the highways or other roads as well? How could this be enforced? It is a “worst scenario” that we want to avert, said a spokesman. That’s why we don’t want to get into details. The emotive word brought back memories of the oil crisis in the 1970s with four car-free Sundays on all highways.
What other measures would be possible?
“Of course we don’t need driving bans,” said Dirk Messner, President of the Federal Environment Agency. This scares people for no reason. Jürgen Resch, managing director of German Environmental Aid, said weekend driving bans were not necessary to bring traffic on a climate-friendly path. Greenpeace expert Benjamin Stephan criticized: “It is pathetic that Volker Wissing now wants to scare drivers, tradesmen and families with the consequences of his years of inaction on climate protection.”
Many environmental associations, including Messner, have long been in favor of a general speed limit on motorways to save CO2 – but the FDP categorically rejects this. Resch said that a speed limit of 100 on motorways, 80 outside towns and 30 in the city alone saves more than half of the amount at over 11 million tonnes. Michael Müller-Görnert, transport policy spokesman for the VCD transport club, said: “Speed limits are the largest and quickest measure to implement in reducing CO2, which would also have high support among the population.”
It will be more difficult to close the remaining gap. “In order to save this large amount immediately, the only thing left to do is to drastically reduce the mileage of cars and trucks. But this also requires the appropriate alternatives and capacities for passenger and freight transport by rail and in local public transport.”
Resch also mentioned an end to the tax deductibility of company cars with high CO2 emissions and a drastic reduction in the usage fee for the rail network – in order to make shifting freight transport to rail more attractive. Messner cited electromobility as the central adjusting screw. A reform of vehicle taxation is necessary in order to make the purchase of particularly climate-damaging cars more expensive.
Why have emissions of greenhouse gases from transport not fallen in recent years?
One of the reasons for this is that there are more and more cars on the road in this country – there are now a good 49 million. And cars are getting bigger and heavier. 40 percent of all newly registered cars are now off-road vehicles or SUVs, which often weigh around two tons and consume a lot of fuel.
At the same time, the breakthrough for electric cars in the mass market that had been hoped for for years did not materialize: the share of purely electric cars in the fleet is languishing at a good two percent. Freight transport is also a problem child because more and more trucks are on the road.
How bad is the climate in this country?
The planet has already heated up by around 1.1 degrees compared to pre-industrial times, and Germany has even heated up by 1.6 degrees. The fatal consequences: Depending on the region and season, there are increasingly frequent heat waves and droughts, forest fires as well as storms and floods.
In 2022, the warmest summer recorded in Europe since records began was measured, with tens of thousands of heat deaths. In March 2023, a study commissioned by the federal government showed that Germany could face costs of up to 900 billion euros from global warming by 2050. An example is the flood disaster in North Rhine-Westphalia and Rhineland-Palatinate with damage of more than 40 billion euros.