In terms of climate policy, a speed limit on motorways is what is called a “low hanging fruit”: a fruit that does not require much effort to be harvested.
Nothing needs to be built or planned, politicians simply have to decide on a speed limit, and the country saves CO2 from the day it comes into effect.
Not an incredible amount, but at least emissions from cars and light commercial vehicles on motorways can be reduced by almost five percent if no one drives faster than 130 kilometers an hour, as the Federal Environment Agency calculates.
Andreas Nefzger
Editor in politics.
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The fact that the exploratory paper by the SPD, Greens and FDP rules out a speed limit can be seen as a success for the Free Democrats.
The other two parties had called for it in their election manifestos.
But also Social Democrats and Greens were able to drive in the first stakes in the explorations.
The idea of dedicating two percent of the country's area to wind power, for example, came from them.
The formulation to make solar systems compulsory on all new commercial buildings and the rule on private new buildings is in turn a weakened form of the demands of the Greens and the SPD.
The Social Democrats and even more so the Greens would have liked to have signed up even more builders.
The result can be read as a compromise between three parties who pursue the same goal, two of which rely on rigid guidelines and one on incentives.
What's not included is also interesting
A compromise is also the formulation found to phase out coal.
The Greens wanted to complete the phase-out by 2030, eight years earlier than previously planned.
What remains of this after the negotiations with the SPD and FDP is that it will "ideally" succeed by 2030.
In other words: if the measures work as hoped.
Wherever the paper of the traffic light parties becomes concrete, it only partially fulfills the claim that the explorers have made. Some things sound like a policy of the lowest common denominator, which, according to the party chairman, is not what the party leaders want to pursue. Other things actually show the declared effort that each party should find itself with its demands in a possible coalition - and in return has to swallow one or the other toad. What is particularly interesting about the paper is what is not on it. It suggests difficult conversations.
For example, there are no concrete milestones in terms of CO2 savings, unlike in the programs of the Greens and the SPD. Instead, it is generally said that it is “our central task to bring Germany onto the 1.5 degree path”. Dissent can also be heard in the formulation that compliance with the climate targets is to be checked “using a cross-sectoral overall calculation, analogous to the Paris Agreement, over several years”.
That doesn't sound like the SPD, whose Environment Minister Schulze would have liked to regularly check for each sector individually whether the climate targets had been achieved - and would have ordered the responsible ministries to rework in case of doubt. And it doesn't sound like the Greens, who campaigned for a climate protection ministry that keeps an eye on the carbon footprint of every new law - and makes use of its right of veto in case of doubt.
Whether a climate minister will sit at the table in a red-green-yellow cabinet has been one of the few points over the past few days on which the otherwise secretive explorers have publicly disagreed.
FDP boss Lindner said on Sunday in the ARD that it was important that each of the three partners could work, and that there was therefore the Chancellery, the Ministry of Finance and "a new Ministry for Climate Change".
On Monday, the SPD chairman Walter-Borjans replied: "We're not talking about which ministry will be tailored how."
Lots of gaps in traffic and agriculture
There are obviously unanswered questions about the design of CO2 pricing. In general, the exploratory paper says that the European emissions trading system is to be "revised in line with the EU's 'Fit for 55' program". The EU Commission wants to shorten the certificates more quickly and expand trade to the housing and transport sectors. The system is the key to success, especially from the FDP's point of view. But what if things don't move fast enough in the EU?
The paper says nothing about the national CO2 price, which the Greens want to raise faster, especially in this case. Accordingly, the SPD, Greens and FDP have so far not commented on social compensation for higher prices. The parties have different concepts. To relieve the burden it only says that they want to "end the financing of the EEG surcharge through the electricity price as quickly as possible". That, in turn, the Greens had imagined differently.
The paper is also rich in gaps when it comes to traffic.
Above all, before 2035, they only want to allow climate-neutral vehicles and install more charging stations for e-cars.
Not a word about the railway, where the FDP would prefer to rely on privatization, or about the Greens' dream of making Germany a “bicycle country”.
There are only sparse sentences about agriculture, for which no party had to bend backwards: Support agriculture in "taking a sustainable, environmentally and nature-friendly path".
In its program, the FDP wants to abolish agricultural subsidies, and the Greens want to use them more for organic farming.
An important sentence in the exploratory paper will remain that of the preamble: "Not all topics were discussed, not every topic discussed in detail."