Large differences in content in the future climate policy orientation.
(Photo: imago, dpa, Marco Urban, BrauerPhotos / Neugebauer)
Berlin When the explorers of the SPD, Greens and Liberals meet again this Monday, one of the topics with the greatest potential for conflict will be future energy and climate policy. Industry representatives, experts and scientists are calling for a change of course and urgently warning against raising the climate protection targets even further.
“We shouldn’t throw any more sticks between the legs of the next government by demanding even stricter targets for 2030,” said Andreas Kuhlmann, head of the federally owned German Energy Agency (Dena), in an interview with Handelsblatt. Corresponding demands would have “surprised him very much”.
From the point of view of the economy, Veronika Grimm, the recently tightened climate protection law has proven useless. “I hope that there will be a rethink in politics.” The “rigid corset” of the law makes climate protection “particularly expensive and inefficient”.
The subject weighs as a mortgage on the talks for a traffic light coalition. The law prescribes strict reduction targets for the various sectors such as transport or industry. While the SPD and the Greens welcome this, the FDP fears “planned economy chaos”.
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In addition to climate policy, tax policy is also controversial. General Secretary Volker Wissing confirmed the FDP’s rejection of tax increases. An Ifo study, which is available exclusively to the Handelsblatt, shows that the burden on earned income with income tax and solidarity surcharge has been falling for 35 years.
The Liberals consistently reject tax increases.
(Photo: dpa)
Grimm and Kuhlmann are not alone with their criticism of the Climate Protection Act. Hubertus Bardt, managing director of the Institut der Deutschen Wirtschaft (IW), also has concerns. The annual sector goals of the Climate Protection Act could “lead to considerable inefficiencies,” he told the Handelsblatt. “If an expensive measure is carried out in one sector because the goal has not yet been achieved, but a cheaper one in another sector is not tackled, then we make climate protection unnecessarily expensive and make decarbonization more difficult.”
This development threatens if the responsible department has to react to an impending target failure with new programs of measures. “We are then not looking for the best way to protect the climate, but rather for the one that fits into a narrow corset of individual goals. That can’t be efficient, ”he said.
Climate protection law is hardly practicable
The Climate Protection Act stipulates that CO2 emissions in Germany must fall 65 percent below the 1990 level by 2030. There are specific reduction targets for the individual sectors for each year. For example, emissions in the transport sector will have to drop from 150 million to 85 million tons within ten years, and a reduction of 43 percent is expected in the building sector.
The ministries of economics and the interior felt in the summer that the law is hardly practicable. After the responsible expert council for climate issues had determined that the building sector had missed its reduction targets in 2020, the two responsible departments had to counteract this with an immediate program worth six billion euros.
This was then assessed as inadequate by the Expert Council. The council announced that it was not possible to quantify the effect of the emergency program transmitted by the ministries in a methodologically consistent, isolated manner.
The assessment reveals a fundamental problem: In some sectors, even with a lot of money, the reduction targets cannot be achieved in the short term. Many billions in funding only have a measurable effect in the following years. There is a great danger that countermeasures will be made with billions every year without coming much closer to the reduction targets.
Coal phase-out as early as 2030?
At another point, too, there is a need for discussion for the traffic light probe: The Greens are vehemently in favor of bringing forward the coal phase-out from 2038 to 2030. SPD chancellor candidate Olaf Scholz had spoken out against moving forward during the election campaign.
There are also reservations in the FDP. Dena boss Kuhlmann attaches conditions to bringing forward the exit: “It must be clear that there is sufficient secured power in the system, which is always available when the renewables cannot make a significant contribution to the generation of electricity.” The plans for replacement capacities in The form of gas-fired power plants would have to be “started immediately” by a new government. Anyone who maintains the corresponding power plant capacity must be rewarded for it.
The energy industry also insists on quick solutions. The addition of gas-fired power plants with an output of 15 gigawatts (GW) is “essential,” said Kerstin Andreae, General Manager of the German Association of Energy and Water Management (BDEW), the Handelsblatt. “It won’t work without adding this capacity. Politicians must therefore create the right framework conditions as quickly as possible. ”For this it is necessary to accelerate the approval procedures for power plants.
More: “Climate neutrality cannot be induced” – Kuhlmann and Grimm are calling for a radical change in climate policy