No matter what the next federal government looks like, it will probably fail because of the existing climate protection laws.

This is suggested by the new lead study "Aim for Climate Neutrality", which the German Energy Agency dena presented on Thursday in Berlin.

The blame for the gloomy prospects are too small-scale specifications that cannot be achieved with conventional means.

These included, for example, the annual targets set in the Climate Protection Act for reducing emissions in the individual fields of generation and use of energy.

These “sectors” include transportation, buildings, industry, power generation, agriculture, and others.

Christian Geinitz

Business correspondent in Berlin

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"The concrete, sector-specific annual targets for the years immediately ahead of us will almost certainly not be achieved," said dena Managing Director Andreas Kuhlmann. “Too much has been left behind in the past few years. The new federal government should definitely be aware of this. ”The energy transition and climate protection must be better organized as a“ task of the century ”and the“ small things of the past few years ”, demanded Kuhlmann. In his view, the current laws stand in the way of efficient action and prevent the necessary dynamism. So far, for example, the responsible federal ministries have to issue immediate programs to reduce greenhouse gas emissions if a sector breaks the hurdles. Kuhlmann expressed doubtsthat this procedure makes sense. In the first year of entry into force, most of the emission sources achieved the targets, but this was mainly due to the lower mobility and the weak economy during the Corona period. In the current year, on the other hand, emissions have risen again, so that the maximum sector limits are likely to be exceeded.

CO2 price as a foundation for climate neutrality

Veronika Grimm, a member of the scientific advisory board for the lead study, pointed out other contradictions.

Politicians are thinking of the introduction of carbon contracts for difference or carbon contracts, through which the state could cushion the financial risks and competitive disadvantages of climate-conscious companies.

If one gets bogged down with such individual regulations, however, the overarching emissions trading would lose its control effect.

In general, the lead study considers the pricing of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases as well as the trade in these pollution rights to be the most important instruments in the fight against global warming. "The CO2 price and the design of a climate-neutral framework and market design are the foundation for achieving climate-neutrality," says the more than 300-page paper. Kuhlmann expects that the rising CO2 prices will ensure that the coal phase-out will be completed in 2030 and not, as planned by law, in 2038. For this, however, renewable energies would have to be expanded more. The experts consider it important that all sectors are included in the pricing and that trading takes place as European and international as possible,in order to avoid competitive disadvantages and the migration of emission-intensive companies to less strict regions (carbon leakage).

5000 billion euros needed by 2045

Cross-border cooperation is also becoming more and more important in energy procurement, it said, for example when importing hydrogen.

In the future, this will serve as a storage medium for green electricity, as a substitute for natural gas in industries such as steel or chemicals, and as fuel in aircraft, in heavy goods vehicles or in ships.

The climate and geopolitical aspect of the global energy market will be a "central task" of the future Federal Foreign Minister, said Kuhlmann.

According to the study, Germany needs "new momentum in energy and climate policy" so that the goals of greenhouse gas reduction and the expansion of renewable energies can be achieved by 2030 as well as the recently legally anchored greenhouse gas neutrality by 2045. The study defines 84 tasks in ten fields of activity, all of which are achievable but must be well "orchestrated" by the new government. It is important to accelerate electrification, but at the same time to use renewable gaseous and liquid energy sources. An increase in energy efficiency is also necessary and, as a fourth pillar, technical and natural CO2 sinks, such as the capture and storage of CO2 when generating “blue” hydrogen from natural gas (CCS technology).

If fossil energy becomes more expensive due to the CO2 price in order to create incentives to avoid it, green electricity must also become cheaper.

Because people want to make greater use of this, for example in electric cars or heat pumps.

The abolition of the EEG surcharge in order to relieve households and companies is therefore overdue, it said.

The development bank KfW reported on Thursday that 5,000 billion euros in investments were necessary to make Germany climate neutral by 2045.

This includes 1,900 billion euros in real additional needs, the rest must be raised anyway, but used in such a way that it serves climate protection.