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The federal government apparently wants to implement the decision of the Federal Constitutional Court on climate protection immediately into German law.
Chancellor Angela Merkel (CDU) will be discussing a reform of the climate protection law with the federal cabinet as early as next week.
Last Thursday, the Federal Constitutional Court ordered the federal government to step up efforts in climate protection.
The “CO2 budget” that is still available to Germany would otherwise be almost exhausted by 2030, at the expense of the next generation.
According to Vice Chancellor Olaf Scholz (SPD), Germany should be completely climate-neutral by 2045.
The goal of not emitting more carbon dioxide than can be absorbed by plants, soil and water was originally not due to be achieved until 2050.
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According to leading climate protection experts, bringing forward German climate neutrality by five years will also have an impact on the European Union, in which a net zero target does not apply until 2050.
"If Germany were to zero in 2045, then this would create leeway for other EU countries to only come to net zero after 2050," said Oliver Geden from the Science and Politics Foundation (SWP) in Berlin.
That would help “to take along stragglers like Ireland or Poland with us at EU level, but it should be viewed critically in Germany,” warned Geden, one of the lead authors of the next assessment report of the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, IPCC.
No impact on the global climate
The milestones on the way to climate neutrality should also be defined more precisely.
Now emissions are to be reduced by 65 percent by 2030 compared to 1990 levels.
So far, a reduction target of only 55 percent has applied.
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In order to achieve this goal, there are discussions about increasing the CO2 taxes on petrol, heating oil and natural gas.
The deliberations also meet with reservations in the coalition: Vice Chancellor Scholz, for example, criticized the fact that the discussed tax increase ignores the social dimension.
The federal government wants to meet the demands of the constitutional judges quickly, also because of the upcoming climate protection conferences. On Thursday, Chancellor Merkel wants to coordinate climate policy goals with other European ministers, heads of state and government at the Petersberg Climate Dialogue. At the World Climate Conference in Glasgow in November, governments are required to make more ambitious climate protection commitments.
Greater efforts to reduce CO2 in Germany, however, are unlikely to have any impact on the global climate. According to the calculations of the Advisory Council on Environmental Issues, which were adopted by the Constitutional Court, Germany will have to get by on a budget of 6.7 gigatons of CO2 by 2045. That is an amount that will be emitted by the People's Republic of China within six months. In other words, the total German carbon dioxide savings up to the middle of the century only offset the Chinese emissions of half a year.