Germany

Gross emissions reductions in Germany since 1990 have been too slow. This is reflected in the different sectors: the agricultural sector has not shown any significant decline of emissions in the last twenty years, the buildings sector’s emissions reductions are too slow and the transport and the industry sectors have even seen some increases in emissions during the last two decades. These sectors did not have specific targets to reduce emissions until the Federal Climate Law of 2019.

In April 2021, the Federal Constitutional Court (Karlsruhe) stated that the government must be more ambitious in mitigating climate change. The Court declared some articles of the Federal Climate Law of December 2019 as unconstitutional, and urged the government and parliament to act more intensively and to immediately revise the law. Due to this court decision, the former government coalition of conservatives and social-democrats hurried to announce a climate neutrality target for 2045, thus bringing the original target forward by five years. In the revised Climate Law, the government aims to reduce gross GHG emissions by at least 65% by 2030 (instead of 55%, the target as of 2019) and to introduce a new reduction target of 88% by 2040.

Although the stated goals are more ambitious than in the past, there is still a lack of concrete measures to achieve them. It also remains to be seen how the revised Climate law will feed into the next NECP revision.

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