The decline in electricity generation from lignite and hard coal as well as the increase in renewable energies are showing surprisingly strong effects: According to experts, the energy turnaround pushed greenhouse gas emissions in Germany to a record low last year.
Compared to 1990, CO2 emissions fell by around 35 percent, according to the annual analysis by the Agora Energiewende think tank, which is available to the dpa news agency. The goal of the Federal Government's climate protection plan to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by at least 40 percent by 2020 is surprisingly "within reach". So far, the Federal Environment Ministry and environmentalists have assumed that it can no longer be reached.
However, the decline of more than 50 million tons of carbon dioxide (CO2) compared to the previous year is due solely to the change in electricity production. Renewable energies - i.e. wind, solar and hydropower as well as biomass - would have covered a record share of 42.6 percent of gross electricity consumption, according to the evaluation. At the same time, electricity production from natural gas has increased significantly. Natural gas is also a fossil fuel, but less harmful to the climate than coal.
In contrast, greenhouse gas emissions in traffic had even increased - also because of the SUV trend. These vehicles are large and consume a comparatively large amount of fuel, and their sales are rising strongly despite the climate change debate in Germany. The consumption of diesel and petrol increased accordingly in the transport sector in 2019.
The same applies to heating oil, whose sales, according to the Energy Balance Working Group, are likely to have increased by around 17 percent compared to the previous year. According to Agora director Patrick Graichen, it played a major role in the fact that fuel oil tanks were filled in stock. Oil heaters are considered to be particularly harmful to the climate - the federal government therefore wants to ban them from buildings.
Falling electricity consumption due to low economic growth
According to Graichen, the current national climate policy of the Union and the SPD has little to nothing to do with progress in climate protection: "It fell into their lap," he said. Rather, the EU's increased CO2 price has made climate-damaging electricity from hard coal and lignite less profitable for the energy industry, which is why it has declined sharply. In addition, according to Agora Energiewende, electricity consumption reached its lowest level since the turn of the millennium last year. This is mainly due to lower economic growth and the economic situation in energy-intensive industries, such as the steel sector.
Graichen also warned that the record reports from the green electricity sector will soon be over - instead, there is a "green electricity gap", ie an unmet demand for electricity from renewable energies. One reason: the proportion of nuclear power was still 12 percent in 2019, which will have to be replaced by other means before the nuclear phase-out in late 2022. In addition, electricity - and indeed green electricity - is to increasingly replace mineral oil as a drive in traffic.
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Since, at the same time, the expansion of wind turbines, in particular, is no longer progressing as quickly as experts consider it necessary, coal power could partially replace nuclear power - at the expense of CO2 emissions. The federal government must change the framework conditions, Graichen demanded: "Without wind power, we will neither achieve the coal phase-out nor the climate protection goals."