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The path to climate neutrality will certainly not be a walk in the park: Economists are already calculating the costs of the energy transition for the next few decades.
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It is the greatest restructuring of the European Union that has ever taken place: with the so-called »Green Deal«, Europe is to be completely turned inside out.
From electricity for industry and households to school buses, the entire society should get along completely without CO2 emissions.
By 2050, the countries want to operate in a climate-neutral manner, i.e. no longer emit any net greenhouse gases into the atmosphere.
The 27 EU states have been discussing this proposal by EU Commission head Ursula von der Leyen for almost exactly a year.
The most important EU institutions - EU Parliament, EU Council and Commission - have been negotiating the climate law since the beginning of this week.
However, there is still no real timetable for 2050.
All that is clear is that the EU wants to invest around one trillion euros within a decade.
Not everyone is enthusiastic about the idea: after all, certain CO2-intensive business models would disappear completely, others would have to adapt.
There is also concern that the change could make life more expensive overall.
It is precisely this fear that has now been given the all-clear from an unexpected source: making the EU climate-neutral is not only possible, it would also no longer cost the citizen, according to a study by management consultancy McKinsey, which SPIEGEL has received in advance.
It is true that the costs and savings would not be the same in all countries.
But the bottom line is that the average household would be spending as much or even less on living costs in 2050 as it does today.
Rich have to pay extra
Middle and lower incomes could even save costs and benefit from the Green Deal, while the wealthy would have to pay more, the report said.
The reason for this is that the wealthy travel more by air, explains study author Hauke Engel in an interview with SPIEGEL.
"The operating costs for aircraft will rise through the use of synthetic fuels."
The study did not take into account whether these additional costs will be cushioned by politics.
"We only looked at the Green Deal from the cost-benefit side for the economy as a whole," said Engel.
For this purpose, based on the current state of the art, the study organizers have calculated the costs and savings of around 600 climate measures for the next 30 years.
Over this period, the falling costs of wind and solar systems or hydrogen production were also included.
"For the vast majority of customers, it will simply no longer make sense to buy a gasoline or diesel engine because the electric car is much cheaper to buy and operate," believes Engels.
With cheap driving - for example, filling up with cheap electricity instead of expensive gasoline - or cheap electricity from your own solar roof, a household will be cheaper overall or at least as expensive as it was in 2020.
The labor market will also benefit from the restructuring: According to McKinsey, six million jobs would be lost, but at the same time eleven million would be added.
People will lose their jobs, for example in the coal industry, but new jobs will be created elsewhere, for example in factories that manufacture batteries for electric cars.
Conversion costs: 180 billion euros per year
Unlike the EU, the study authors put the annual costs for the transformation at one trillion euros, i.e. ten times what the EU estimates.
But: Of this, 800 million would be invested in the private sector anyway - still today in coal, oil and gas.
In the future, the money would have to be diverted to green infrastructure.
An additional 180 million per year are incurred to make the Union CO2-free.
So at least 80 billion euros more than the EU has planned so far.
But despite all the optimism, there are also losers in the economy: by 2050, more than 200 billion euros could end up as so-called “stranded assets”.
According to Hauke Engels, these are, for example, old blast furnaces that are no longer needed in the green age.
The fastest changeover will come in the energy sector: According to the study authors, electricity and heat generation must become climate-neutral as early as the 2040s.
Here they propose the expansion of wind energy, particularly in Northern Europe, and the expansion of solar power in Southern Europe.
However, the study excluded political conflicts, such as the expansion of wind farms on land - here the “best-case scenario” applies.
Keep driving and eating meat - despite the climate crisis
It is noteworthy that the study assumes that nothing has really changed in terms of living habits for European citizens: they can consume, drive, heat and eat at the same level as they are today.
"Of course we could become even more cost-efficient if we eat less meat," admits Hauke Engels.
However, the study only calculated for the Union: imports from other parts of the world such as Argentinean steaks, animal feed or textiles made in Asia and their respective local CO-2 emissions are not taken into account in the calculations.
Quite apart from the ecological consequences of mining precious metals or clearing forests for palm oil plantations.
Is the look into McKinsey's climate-neutral future perhaps too good to be true?
Perhaps.
However, it clearly invalidates the argument that the Green Deal is driving the European economy to ruin or de-industrializing it.
Such feasibility studies are important not least because a majority of Germans still cannot imagine that Europe will really become climate neutral by 2050.
"McKinsey shows that it is cheaper to save the world than to let it go to the dogs," said Patrick Graichen, director of the Agora Energiewende think tank.
The study confirms that climate neutrality is technically possible and economically attractive by 2050.
Graichen is even more optimistic: The transformation of industry on the basis of new key technologies can be initiated before 2030.
So what is “only” missing is the political will of the 27 EU countries.
The next few weeks should decide whether the Green Deal will find a majority in the Union.
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