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Prosper coking plant in Bottrop, North Rhine-Westphalia
Photo: Rupert Oberhäuser / IMAGO
The German greenhouse gases increased again significantly in the second year of the corona virus.
As the Federal Environment Agency (UBA) shows in the figures presented on Tuesday, emissions rose to 762 million tons - that is 33 million tons or 4.5 percent more than in 2020. Emissions increased particularly in industry and the energy sector, but also in transport of gases that are harmful to the climate again increased by tens of millions, with emissions only falling by a few tons in agriculture and buildings.
In order to achieve the climate targets by 2030, however, greenhouse gas emissions would actually have to fall by six percent per year, warns the President of the Federal Environment Agency, Dirk Messner.
"Since 2010, however, the average has not even been two percent."
However, the climate statistics since the outbreak of the corona pandemic should be treated with caution.
Because the past two years have falsified the actual climate balance: Because the German economy had to be partially shut down in 2020 and 2021, many people worked from home and traveled less.
A year ago, many were still celebrating the historic collapse of climate-damaging gases, even the German climate targets of 2020, which had almost been missed, were suddenly easy to achieve.
Emissions are now rising again from this corona low.
Nevertheless, they are still below the emissions of 2019 - the last "normal" year.
The challenge for analysts is now to calculate the corona effect out of the numbers - and to recognize a general trend: Where does Germany stand on the way to climate neutrality?
Is the increase in emissions from the previous year a major setback for German climate policy?
The Corona break is over
The answer is a resounding "Yes".
Above all, today's figures show that the Corona break was really just a break and the historic slump from 2019 to 2020 was just an exception.
For the first time since World War II, emissions fell by a spectacular nine percent at the beginning of the pandemic.
This historic value is now being partially eaten up again by the new increase in 2021: the German economy has been on the up again for a year – but so are emissions.
This could have been prevented by a forward-looking policy, such as drastic climate protection measures that could have prompted a faster move away from coal, oil or natural gas.
But the previous government's supposedly "green" Corona reconstruction package had little effect.
Germany is therefore a long way from reducing emissions by six percent per year, as required by the UBA.
Instead, emissions increased, for example in traffic (by around three million tons) but also in industry (by nine million tons).
According to the authority, this was mainly due to truck traffic, which rolled again last year, and the resumption of steel production.
In 2021, emissions from power plants increased particularly sharply – by 27 million tons.
That is about as much as the CO2-intensive lignite-fired power plant in Jänschwalde in Brandenburg emits into the air per year.
The authority's data show quite clearly that significantly more lignite was burned throughout Germany last year.
But hard coal and natural gas also increased.
"The energy price crisis has already led to a shift from natural gas to coal in 2021," Gunnar Luderer, energy expert at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK) comments to SPIEGEL.
"Because of the Ukraine crisis, it is to be feared that this trend will intensify and lead to additional emissions in the short term."
It is not unusual for there to be such large fluctuations in the energy industry.
Their emissions depend on how hard the winters are, how high the CO2 price is, how much wind blows and whether renewables can replace fossil energies.
Electricity production also accounts for the largest share of German emissions and is extremely vulnerable to changing political conditions.
Immediate programs for traffic and buildings
Paradoxically, however, the sectors with the highest CO2 increases are not necessarily the ones that now need to be improved.
According to the Climate Protection Act, power plants, industry, transport, buildings and agriculture may not exceed a certain emission limit per year - these values will decrease every year until 2030. Then only slightly more than half of today's greenhouse gases will be allowed to escape into the atmosphere .
If a sector exceeds the targets, the responsible ministries must propose an emergency program to still achieve the values.
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According to figures from the Federal Environment Agency, it will hit the building sector and transport for the second time this year.
Here, the measured CO2 values exceeded the legally permitted limit – even if, as in the building sector, they actually fell slightly compared to the previous year.
In both areas, reductions are particularly difficult because they are very small-scale: millions of houses in Germany have to be insulated and millions of cars and buses have to be converted from diesel and petrol to electric motors.
Many Germans have become painfully aware that most households are still heated with oil and gas, not because of climate change but because of the war in Ukraine.
Here, too, years of hesitation are taking their toll, for example with the installation of climate-friendly heat pumps.
Is the reversal coming now?
But there is also good news: If you compare the new UBA figures from 2021 with pre-Corona times, they are still around 40 million tons below them - despite the renewed increase.
That means: Despite the increase this year (!), emissions are still
tending to
decrease .
In addition, all sectors apart from transport and buildings are on the legally prescribed reduction path.
Even before the pandemic, emissions in Germany were falling.
In 2019, the Federal Environment Agency recorded a drop of 54 million tons.
That was the second highest decline since 1990. Here, too, energy production played the biggest role: before the pandemic, the European CO2 price had an effect for the first time and burning climate-damaging coal was no longer worthwhile, gas was cheaper.
Gas prices are currently astronomically high due to the Ukraine war, making coal attractive again – the worst case scenario in terms of climate policy.
That is why it is difficult to distinguish between the corona effect, politically unfavorable conditions and the effect of climate protection measures with such climate data.
How much of that is a real decline?
The government naturally likes to credit emissions cuts to its own account, and increases are usually blamed on external factors.
A year ago, the Merkel government argued that not only the pandemic but also climate protection measures would finally make themselves felt.
After all, there is a CO2 price on fuel and renewable energies account for over 50 percent of the electricity supply.
Niklas Höhne from the NewClimate Institute is more skeptical.
He sees no sign of a turnaround in either the old or the new figures: "We are not yet on the right track," says the climate expert.
»Corona only gave us a little breather, the extent of the missing reduction measures is now becoming clear.«
Gunnar Luderer from PIK also sees it this way: “Germany is still a long way from being on course to achieve climate neutrality”.
Nevertheless, the increase in emissions in 2021 is also largely due to the absence of corona-related special effects and the weather.
This must be clearly separated from the other factors.
"But the high level of emissions is also the result of the inadequate climate protection efforts of the last decade," says the scientist.
»The expansion of wind and solar energy is faltering, too few old buildings are being refurbished in terms of energy efficiency and the traffic turnaround is also progressing far too slowly.«
Both fear that these omissions could take bitter revenge in times of the Ukraine war.
"We now need an emergency plan for the climate and Ukraine crisis with a focus on saving energy, expanding renewable energies and targeted social balance," says Niklas Höhne.
The Federal Government's Council of Climate Experts must now analyze how big the gap really is between the climate target and the figures presented.
He has one month to evaluate the data.
But the verdict of these experts should not be particularly positive.
The lost years under the governments led by Angela Merkel are becoming more noticeable every year.
And it will probably be at least another one to two years before the traffic light coalition's climate measures take effect.