The transport sector may continue to miss its climate targets.
Photo: IMAGO/Joachim Tack
In terms of climate policy, the traffic light coalition falls apart before the summer break. The plan was actually to present a comprehensive immediate climate protection program for 2022 by Wednesday at the latest, of which hundred-page drafts have been circulating in the media since the beginning of April. The measures that were to be announced today according to the Climate Protection Act for transport and buildings should also be included in the ambitious overall program. Because both areas had exceeded their specified climate budget in 2021 – the buildings by two million and traffic by 3.1 million tons of CO2.
But the traffic light plan failed: the coordination process for the immediate climate program was not completed by July 13, according to a catalog of measures for the building sector on Wednesday. Secretary of State for Economic Affairs Patrick Graichen confirmed that discussions between the relevant ministries are still ongoing. That is why the economics and construction departments have now presented an immediate program for buildings alone. In this sector, which is particularly sluggish in terms of climate policy, measures often do not have an immediate effect. In addition, not only the two million tons of CO2– to make up for the overdraft, but the greenhouse gas budget for buildings also continues to decrease. For this reason, Graichen expects that a “mountain of emissions” will build up by the mid-2020s, which will then have to be removed again by 2030.
Graichen quantified the total excess of the existing CO with a view to the climate targets2-Budgets for the buildings to around 150 million tons. With the measures that have now been decided, the area could then be back on track by around 2026 or 2027 in order to achieve a precision landing in 2030. Graichen described the planned procedure in the years to come.
As has already been rumored, the main means should be a ban on the installation of new gas heating systems from 2024. However, the ban is only indirectly in the immediate program. With an amendment to the Building Energy Act, it should be stipulated that if possible every newly installed heating system should then be operated with at least 65 percent renewable energy – and that would no longer work with gas, if you exclude biogas.
Such a de facto ban would be effective, because currently every third new building and three out of four existing buildings still have fossil-fuelled heating systems installed, above all natural gas boilers, according to the immediate program. The share of renewables in building heat is also stagnating at a very low level of 15 percent.
Graichen pointed out on Wednesday that in the period up to 2030 the building sector will reduce its CO2– will exceed the current budget by 150 million tons. In the transport sector, however, it is 270 million tons.
Federal Transport Minister Volker Wissing (FDP) is apparently not interested in the long-term overdraft perspective. In the emergency program for the transport sector, his department concentrated on compensating for last year’s excess of 3.1 million tons – and not this year or next, but by 2030. The transport department sees the expansion of digital forms of work as the most important means. According to Wissing’s immediate program, the boost to working from home instead of in the office triggered by Corona should be strengthened by legal foundations for mobile working.
A second measure is to increase the greenhouse gas reduction rate by one percentage point by 2030. With the controversial quota, the mineral oil industry has to prove that it is replacing fossil fuels with climate-neutral fuels and thus reducing CO2 saves. The oil industry can count the use of biomethane twice as a saving and three times that of green e-charging current. These avenues are called “fulfilment options.” Wissing now wants to expand it: to include electricity-based fuels, so-called e-fuels, and even more “advanced biofuels”. The latter is agrofuel, which is made from residual and waste materials.
Overall, the package of transport measures is to reduce around 13 million tons of CO by 20302 save on. Although this would mathematically balance the additional emissions from 2021, the sector would still miss its climate targets by 2030 by a wide margin.
For Jürgen Resch, the head of the German Environmental Aid, the transport minister’s action plan is also an “oath of disclosure by the FDP”. Wissing wants millions of tons of CO via non-existent »climate-friendly fuels«2 save on. “We need an end to sleight of hand and the start of honest, short-term effective measures,” said Resch. There is nothing about that in the program.
The DUH boss also criticizes the SPD and the Greens. The traffic light partners continued to accept the FDP’s »de facto guideline competence« in climate protection. Resch: “It’s not enough to ask people to take cold showers.”
Green parliamentary group leader Julia Verlinden was also dissatisfied with Wissing’s template. It has been known since April that traffic emissions – despite reduced mobility due to the pandemic – are not on target. “It is more than questionable whether the measures presented today by the Minister of Transport will bring this sector back on track with the agreed climate protection goals,” said Verlinden.