Focus on climate crisis
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Reporting on climate change is one of the major journalistic challenges of our time. The climate crisis is also one of the most important issues of humanity for SPIEGEL. For this reason, we support an international initiative that seeks to take a look this week: "Covering Climate Now" has been initiated by the Columbia Journalism Review and the Canadian newspaper "The Nation", with more than 200 media companies worldwide including the Guardian, El País, La Repubblica, The Times of India, Bloomberg or Vanity Fair. SPIEGEL is dedicating the cover story of the current issue to the climate crisis this week and every day pays special attention to mirror.de
When climate protection was dawdled for a long time. Now the nerves are bare. Every year, the amount that Germany is allowed to blow into the atmosphere after greenhouse gas emissions from the Paris climate targets is getting smaller. They provide that the planet may not warm by more than 1.5 degrees compared to the pre-industrial level.
The Federal Government's key paper presented today is coming late. One and a half years have passed since the formation of the government. Unlike promised, the paper is by no means a climate protection law. When politicians legally bind themselves to saving greenhouse gases, it remains uncertain.
The disappointment in climate research is huge: "This key issues paper is a clear policy failure," says Anders Levermann of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK). "We do not need political compromises now, but reductions," says the climate scientist. But they would be delayed with the cornerstones of the government and put off the bench.
Climatologists have been warning for years that the clock is ticking. Every month, in which no action is taken, the German climate debts rise: For example, Chancellor Angela Merkel admitted at today's press conference in Berlin again that she misses the 2020 climate target. Germany is behind this target at around 100 million tonnes a year - more than the CO2 emissions of Belgium. The next stage will be even more delicate. According to the "Climate Protection Plan 2050", by 2030 people want to reduce their emissions by 300 million tons per year - about as much as the entire German energy industry spouts. The government would have to do more in the next ten years than in the last 30 years.
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Most important point: a price for CO2
For the first time today, the government has proposed concrete steps to make progress in the period from 2020 to 2030. Unlike in the first drafts, however, it is unclear how much the individual measures bring. Climate researcher Anders Levermann, however, is sure that the volume is insufficient. The individual measures of the 22-page Eckpunkteplans are not so crucial. "The most important thing would have been a CO2 price of at least 35 euros a ton," said Levermann. "The economy needs the clear statement of the policy that greenhouse gases are priced and this will no longer sink in the future, but only increases - otherwise they can not act."
According to the Key Issue Paper 2021, the government intends to invest 10 euros per tonne in the national emissions trading scheme for transport and buildings. In European emissions trading, the price today is already 26 euros per tonne. The principle: the higher the price, the higher the chances that CO2 will actually be saved. From 2026, the plan then sets a price range of 35 to 60 euros - which means that not only a minimum but also a maximum price is part of the climate package. For Levermann the wrong way: "Upper limits only make the ton of sense from 150 euros - that's no good."
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"If we want to reduce from today's 800 million tonnes of CO2 emissions to zero by 2050, we must now reduce 25 to 40 million tonnes per year," says Levermann. "With a starting price of 10 euros, that's just not possible with the ton of CO2."
Sustainability researcher Christian Flachsland from the Hertie School of Governance in Berlin also believes that. He wrote together with other climate scientists in the summer of a contribution to the special report of the economies for CO2 pricing. In it they plead equally for a CO2 tax and an emissions trading - both instruments are suitable if the ton of CO2 at least 35 to 50 euros start the ton and are reasonably designed.
"The climate protection package is an expression of climate policy despondency," comments Flachsland the results now available. Although the Federal Government had presented the architecture of a comprehensive CO2 price tag - with the proposed low prices, it had failed to really enter into an effective CO2 price.
No sufficient steering effect due to the low CO2 price
Economists also believe that the cornerstones are not enough to achieve the climate goals in 2030: "We calculated that with a price of ten euros, the tonne gives it almost no steering effect," says Claudia Kemfert from the German Institute for Economic Research ( DIW). Overall, only a good three million tons would be saved. This could even be reduced if the commuter tax allowance - as described in the Key Issues Paper - is raised, thus motivating people to drive. Kemfert also fundamentally doubts that Germany can set up national emissions trading within a few months: "Experience has shown that this takes up to three years".
A tax considers the economist easier to implement than a trade, which must then be controlled by the policy with upper and lower limits. Such price corridors contradict the goals of independent, purely market-driven pricing, says Kemfert. In the negotiations, a mixed model between tax and emissions trading had been in conversation. "This compromise has been discussed very favorably among economists," says Kemfert. The SPD had demanded a tax, but ultimately not enforced.
Expansion of renewable energies and phase out of coal-fired power generation
The largest savings in the individual measures to succeed on the coal exit. An earlier draft said that the government wanted to reduce 43 of the 300 million tonnes needed. The three largest lignite-fired power plants alone - Neurath, Niederaussem and Jänschwalde - together emit nearly 80 million tonnes of CO2. Although all Kohlemeiler by 2038 from the grid, but so far is unclear when exactly which power plant is shut down. It is still uncertain how many tons of CO2 the government will be able to put into its account as climate protection in 2030 because the exit timetable does not yet stand.
Even with wind and solar energy, a lot has to be done so that they can become the driving force of the climate package. Renewable energies have repeatedly set new records, most recently the share in the electricity sector has risen to over 40 percent. In doing so, they produce more electricity than all brown and hard coal fired power stations together. The fact that photovoltaics eliminates the much scolded "lid" - ie a limitation of production - helps the industry. However, less likely to be the windmill. Instead of a previously planned increase in the amount of food, there are now stricter rules of distance in the key paper.
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The Federal Environment Agency warned in advance that this could halve the wind power areas. Here, the CDU has shown in the negotiations hard, it says from negotiating circles. The construction of wind turbines on land is at its lowest level since the introduction of the Renewable Energy Act in 2000. According to industry associations, the reason for this is the more stringent distance regulations, long approval procedures and German Air Traffic Control regulations. According to the industry association, the allowable expansion would have to be increased to 4.7 gigawatts in order to meet the climate targets of 2030, but at the moment this figure is only 2.9 gigawatts.
Promote instead of demand: Many individual measures should help, but it is unclear how they work
In addition to the major changes, the Key Issues Paper lists individual measures to help achieve the goals. One of them is the ban on oil heating and "other purely fossil heating systems" from 2026. Most of these systems are outdated anyway according to the German Association of the German Heating Industry (BDH), a switch to natural gas possible in a timely manner. That a ban comes, after all, is a small advance.
In the transport sector, too, things do not look different: apart from the pricing of fuels through emissions trading, it is above all subsidy programs. The research on alternative fuels should be addressed open-ended, the truck traffic to a large extent on the rail to relocate has long been required, but never implemented.
For many of the measures in the key issues paper, it is not clear how exactly they will work and what savings they will bring. Instead of bans and deadlines, the government has agreed on incentive systems. So a higher purchase price for electric cars is good and good - but no one can foresee how manufacturers take into account the premium in their pricing policy and how many people really opt for a new car.
The situation with regard to tax relief and subsidy programs for renovations of old buildings is similar - as many landlords opt for insulation is not foreseeable. Many items of the Climate Package are offers, not prompts. The figures given by the government are therefore only estimates.
Providing money for a sustainable future is fundamentally correct, says energy economist Kemfert. "Introducing subsidies for a climate-friendly economy without at the same time reducing fossil subsidies makes things unnecessarily expensive," she says, criticizing the creation of a parallel system: climate-damaging behavior would be further promoted, but climate-friendly, too, said Kemfert. The planned increase in the commuter tax allowance, for example, counteracts the pricing of diesel vehicles, because driving at the same time promoted but also taxed.
According to the Federal Environment Agency, the state subsidizes fossil technologies with 57 billion euros per year, including the tax relief for diesel and the tax exemption of aviation fuel. "Increasing the purchase premium for e-cars is money thrown out if we do not abolish the diesel privilege," says Kemfert. Only if one shook the artificially low prices for fossile energies, a real climate change would be possible.
"If we continue this way, everything will fly around our ears," says climate scientist Levermann. Germany just does not have time to try a bunch of incentives and incentives. "If we no longer want coal, oil, gas and internal combustion engines in our country by 2050, we will have to push through a massive overhaul in the next ten years," says Levermann. "For this we have to change the road planning, energy networks and the heat supply, otherwise we will not be able to do it anymore."
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1.5 degree goal: Government is not on course
If one measures the German efforts on the Paris climate goals it becomes even gloomier. According to this, the states undertake to keep the rise in the average global temperature well below 2 degrees above the pre-industrial level and to limit the temperature increase to 1.5 degrees as much as possible. Also the coalition confesses itself in the paper again to the 1.5 degree goal.
For Germany, the German Council of Economic Experts for Environmental Issues has calculated a residual emissions quantity that can still be emitted from 2020: 6,600 million tonnes. Currently, greenhouse gas emissions amount to 866 million tons per year. There remains a fairly clear budget that only lasts for almost eight years. If the remainder of the budget is spread over the next 30 years, Germany will probably only produce a quarter of its greenhouse gas emissions from next year.
"Even we climate scientists are surprised at how quickly the climate phenomena change, like the jet stream - we constantly have record-breaking weather phenomena," says Levermann. "A reduction to zero emissions is not negotiable and we have a historically small window of only 30 years."
