Dusseldorf “There will be no general speed limit.” That’s how it is clearly stated in the coalition agreement. The sentence, which ended up there at the urging of the FDP, could now become a crucial test for the federal government. Because what was still an acceptable concession by the Greens to the Liberals during the coalition negotiations last year is apparently no longer that. Also because the topic of saving energy is no longer just about climate protection, but also about “annoying Putin”, as Economics Minister Robert Habeck says.
Contrary to the coalition agreement, the Greens are now pushing for a general speed limit on motorways. Car-free Sundays are also being discussed as an energy-saving measure.
Federal Finance Minister and FDP leader Christian Lindner, on the other hand, is vehemently opposed to the fuel-saving proposals: “The impact on the climate would be marginal,” he said on Friday about the speed limit. It is a “symbolic debate” that “does not get us anywhere”. So who is correct? What would a speed limit really achieve? And would car-free days actually be mere symbolic politics?
What can be said up front: To bring Putin to his knees, a speed limit and empty streets on selected days are hardly any good. “Of course, these are not measures that can completely establish independence from Russia,” says Philipp Klöckner, a researcher at the Federal Environment Agency.
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With a view to the total oil consumption in Germany, the savings from such measures are rather small. But: A speed limit is an opportunity “to act immediately and to reduce dependence on Russia with a quick and simple measure”. And: “We should use all the registers that we can pull out.”
>> Read here: Despite the corona pandemic: the transport sector will again miss its climate targets in 2021
At 100 km/h on motorways and 80 km/h on non-urban roads, around 2.1 billion liters of fossil fuels could be saved per year, Klöckner calculates based on mobility data from 2020.
That would correspond to around 3.8 percent of the total annual consumption of fossil fuels in Germany. It is already taken into account that not all motorists would adhere to the specified limits. “The savings potential would definitely be greater if compliance with the speed limit were monitored more strictly,” says Klöckner.
Even without an additional speed limit on federal roads, a speed limit of 100 km/h would result in annual savings of around 1.7 billion liters of fossil fuels, around 3.4 percent of total annual fuel sales. With a speed limit of 130 km/h, the savings effect would be more than halved: Only 596 million liters of savings would then remain (see graphic).
The fact that fuel savings increase so significantly with a speed limit of 100 km/h is also due to the fact that a speed limit of 120 km/h already applies on parts of the German autobahn. “On these routes, a speed limit of 130 km/h would not save anything,” explains Benjamin Stephan from Greenpeace.
In a study published in March, the environmental organization comes to similar, albeit somewhat higher savings results than the Federal Environment Agency. According to this, at 100 km/h on motorways and 80 km/h on out-of-town roads, around 2.4 billion liters of fossil fuels could be saved per year.
The slightly higher number compared to the calculations of the Federal Environment Agency is due to the fact that Greenpeace calculates consumption and mobility values from 2018, while the Federal Environment Agency refers to the more current values from 2020. “The potential for savings is a bit lower there – simply because less was driven due to Corona,” says Philipp Klöckner from the Federal Environment Agency.
And what about car-free Sundays? Greenpeace has also made calculations for this, also based on mobility data from 2018. It was assumed that traffic would decrease by 80 percent on car-free days, says Benjamin Stephan.
It was not assumed that on car-free days no journeys would be made in the car at all, but rather “shifted a bit to other days of the week and trips were still made in special situations”.
The result: If Germany’s streets remained largely empty on every Sunday, this would result in fuel savings of 2.9 billion liters for the year as a whole – 5.6 percent of annual fuel sales in Germany. With two car-free Sundays a month, 2.6 percent of fuel consumption could still be saved (see chart).
Stephan’s conclusion: “The speed limit is by far the strongest immediate measure in Germany. And even a car-free Sunday is much more than a symbol.” Against this background, the Greenpeace representative finds the attitude of the FDP “completely incomprehensible”. All the more so “when we take a look back at history”.
He is referring to the oil price crisis in the 1970s. Back then, in October 1973, a government coalition of SPD and FDP had temporarily decided on car-free Sundays and a speed limit of 100 km/h – without much resistance from the population. The result: “a considerable downward trend” in petrol sales, it said at the time in response to a written request from the Bundestag.
On February 21, 1974, shortly after the end of the temporary measures, the Federal Ministry of Economics stated more specifically: “While petrol sales in 1973 increased by a total of 1.9 percent compared to the previous year, they fell by 0.3 percent in November 1973 and in December 1973 10.9 percent compared to the respective month of the previous year.”
How large the proportion of speed limits and driving bans was was not surveyed. However, “estimates by the petroleum industry” assume “that both measures have contributed about half of the savings”.
Henning Türk is a historian at the Leibniz Institute for Contemporary History in Potsdam and has dealt intensively with the energy policy of the 1970s. He can understand both current perspectives on speed limits and car-free days – both that of the FDP and that of the Greens.
“I don’t think that a speed limit or car-free Sundays would have a decisive effect in terms of Putin now,” he says. “It’s more important to diversify more, to get oil from other countries.”
However, he believes, says Türk, “that these measures could definitely have an effect from a climate protection perspective. From this point of view, a speed limit would now be an important step – and less to put pressure on Putin.”
As a result of the oil price crisis, the western industrialized countries founded the International Energy Agency (IEA) in 1974 as a control body for the joint path to independence from the oil states. And since its first published report around half a century ago, it has been insisting on introducing a general speed limit in Germany in order to save oil and energy.
So far, various federal governments have managed to ignore this recommendation, says historian Türk. “Now – in the midst of the Ukraine war – could be an opportune time to finally comply.”
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