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"Odervorland" wind energy park in the Oder-Spree district
Photo: Patrick Pleul / DPA
The Federal Minister of Economics recently sounded like Elon Musk when he pondered in an interview with SPIEGEL about electric aircraft, synthetic fuels and CO2-neutral steel production.
The German economy is currently being completely turned inside out by the fight against global warming, said Peter Altmaier.
"I rely on the ingenuity of our engineers."
The visionary statements of the CDU politician are likely to be early election campaign noise.
At the same time, they have a specific background.
On Wednesday, EU Commission head Ursula von der Leyen (CDU) announced an ambitious climate target for Europe: By 2030, CO2 emissions from the 27 EU countries are to be reduced by 55 percent compared to 1990 levels.
That would correspond to a reduction of more than 2.6 billion tons per year - or 2.6 billion flights from Frankfurt am Main to Lisbon and back.
This should be pushed with hundreds of billions of euros from the Corona reconstruction fund.
Ultimately, the CO2 savings are likely to be a little less than what is written on the paper.
This is because the EU Commission is including in its 55 percent target for the first time the CO2-binding effect of some forests and moors that were previously not taken into account in the climate balance.
Depending on the exact calculation method, the EU climate target could effectively be reduced by two to three percentage points, criticizes the environmental protection organization CAN Europe.
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