background
Status: 08/30/2021 1:34 p.m.
Suddenly everyone wants to be somehow climate neutral – companies, states, politics. Often there is also talk of CO2-neutral or greenhouse gas-neutral. Anyway, the main thing is neutral? Not at all.
According to its own statements, the FDP parliamentary group in the Bundestag works in a completely climate-neutral manner. According to the Left Party, Germany should be climate neutral by 2035. in the tightened climate protection law The federal government still in office is targeting greenhouse gas neutrality by 2045. Or do you mean climate neutrality? Or both? The Union wants to create a climate-neutral Germany without endangering prosperity and jobs. The European oil and gas giants Shell and Total are striving for CO2 neutrality by 2050. The terms get confused. An overview.
the initial situation
The earth’s climate has been reasonably stable over the past 10,000 years, and that is considered an essential requirement for that Development of high cultures of mankind. But the entire history of the earth shows that between stable phases at very different temperature levels there were also times with strongly fluctuating conditions. The difference in the current climate crisis: It is man-made and runs about ten times faster.
This is because humans release a lot of additional greenhouse gases in a short period of time. Mainly because carbon stocks that nature has stored as coal, oil and gas over millions of years are burned and released in the form of CO2 in just a few years. In addition, there is methane, which is natural gas that is released from the boreholes and pipelines as well as from the cultivation of wet rice and in agriculture by ruminants such as cattle, goats and sheep. And finally, there are a number of other gases that have an impact on the climate.
The political goal: fewer greenhouse gases
In the Paris Climate Agreement, the states stipulated that they want to reduce greenhouse gas emissions as soon as possible with the aim of achieving a balance between man-made emissions and absorption capacity – through lowering until the second half of the century.
This is commonly called “net zero emissions” or in German “greenhouse gas neutrality”. But there are actually no binding definitions for these terms in the climate policy debate – neither in the Paris Agreement nor anywhere else. But science does make a distinction.
Greenhouse gas neutral or “net zero emissions”
This means that the sum of climate-relevant gases in the atmosphere no longer increases. This applies to carbon dioxide (CO2), methane (CH4), nitrous oxide (N2O) and a number of fluorinated greenhouse gases (F-gases). They have very differently strong effects on the climate and that is why they are each converted to CO2 units.
There are a number of ways in which this balance can be achieved. For example, by simply stopping burning coal, oil and gas, draining peatlands or keeping cattle. Or by making moors wet again and reforesting forests to recapture CO2. Technical solutions are also conceivable, such as CCS (carbon capture and storage), i.e. the separation of CO2 from exhaust gases with subsequent compression and locking in underground storage.
It doesn’t matter which gas you avoid or collect. Only in total, converted into CO2 units, must not increase the content of the atmosphere. Because of this conversion, the impression arises that the same thing would then have to be CO2-neutral.
Co2 neutral
The term is ambiguous and that is why the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has dispensed with it in its latest status report. China has set itself the goal of being CO2-neutral by 2060. Strictly speaking, that does not say anything about whether the other greenhouse gases will not continue to rise. The term “carbon neutral” is mainly used in the English-speaking world (carbon neutral). This is vague, however, because carbon is contained almost everywhere, but basically also means CO2-neutral. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change also dispenses with this in its current report.
Zero greenhouse gas emissions or “emission-free”
Basically it is also a strict requirement. Because then no more greenhouse gas should be produced. The compensation option is then no longer available.
Climate neutral
Is a particularly popular and at the same time a particularly vague term. From a scientific point of view, this is actually a very strict requirement. Because that would mean that not only the greenhouse gases would have to come into equilibrium, but that all other effects of human activity with a climate impact would also be affected. For example, the cooling effect of aerosols in exhaust gases (e.g. sulfur dioxide) or the warming effect of contrails.
In fact, “climate-neutral” is often used quite differently in advertising. Companies are talking about their production being climate-neutral because they continue to happily emit greenhouse gases, but through payments they help to reduce them elsewhere in the world. The climate does not initially care where it is protected and it works in the beginning, the market decides where it is cheapest. But that’s not a concept for the future, because if everyone has to reduce quickly and a lot, that won’t help.