Regression everywhere? Where the criticism of the amended Climate Protection Act falls short

It was supposed to be a "further development" of the climate protection law, but environmental organizations everywhere only see it as a step backwards. "What the traffic light parties decided in the coalition committee is a frontal attack on the climate protection law," scolded Christoph Heinrich, CEO of WWF Germany, after the governing parties had presented the results of their deliberations.

Heinrich's voice was just one in a chorus of critics: "The current climate protection law is being softened," said Olaf Bandt, chairman of the Federation for Environmental Protection and Nature Conservation (BUND). The Climate Alliance Germany, an association of churches, trade unions, consumer protection groups and environmental associations, announced a joint demonstration with Fridays for Future in front of the Federal Ministry of Transport.

"Instead of implementing effective measures in traffic, the Federal Government is weakening the Climate Protection Act - so that Transport Minister Wissing no longer has to submit anything?" the appeal said. That was "absolutely unacceptable".

The criticism only seems plausible at first glance: Until now, the Climate Protection Act had stipulated a maximum permitted amount of CO₂ emissions for each economic sector - buildings, transport, energy production and agriculture - for each year up to 2030. If this maximum amount is exceeded, the responsible departmental minister is obliged to bring his sector back on the path of virtue by means of "immediate measures" within a year.

Most recently, these legislative consequences met the Federal Ministers Volker Wissing (FDP) and Klara Geywitz (SPD). Their sectors, transport and buildings, had emitted more CO₂ than the law allows.

Now the coalition committee has taken this direct responsibility back: In future there will be no annual and sector-specific CO₂ ceiling, but only a cross-sector, multi-year overall calculation. If the savings in traffic are not as desired, this can compensate for over-fulfillment in industry, for example.

Environmental groups see this as a dilution of responsibility: "Abolishing the binding sector targets takes the pressure off areas that have so far failed to protect the climate, such as transport and buildings," criticizes BUND boss Bandt. "Volker Wissing thus receives a free ticket for his refusal to protect the climate."

Allegations that probably allude to the speed limit, which Wissing rejects. However, beyond this popular contentious issue, which dominates the public debate, the criticism that the transport minister is by no means solely responsible for the low level of climate protection success in his sector is suppressed.

In fact, it is the Federal Ministry for the Environment that has knocked many options out of the hands of the Wissing department. The ministry, most recently headed by Svenja Schulze (SPD) and currently by Steffi Lemke (Greens), had resisted the approval of hydrogenated vegetable oils (HVO100) as an ecological diesel substitute for years.

Refineries are also not allowed to count it on their CO₂ balance sheet if they use green hydrogen: the environment ministers were also responsible for this, not the transport minister. Lemke is now also planning to phase out biodiesel and bioethanol from cultivated biomass by 2030, although their use saved 7.5 million tonnes of CO₂ last year.

If Germany therefore does not achieve the CO₂ targets set by the EU in traffic, Germany would have to buy climate certificates abroad to compensate, warns Elmar Baumann from the Association of the Biofuel Industry: “Billions in payments would flow out of the federal budget abroad because, in all seriousness, less climate protection in road traffic would like to operate than today.”

The examples show that the sectoral allocation of responsibility in the Climate Protection Act did not reflect reality. Because if the Ministry of Transport has not delivered on climate protection, the Ministry of the Environment bears a good portion of the blame, or to put it bluntly: Wissing is beaten up for something that Lemke is also responsible for.

The same applies to recent efforts to renaturate agricultural land in order to bind more CO₂ in the soil: the loss of cultivation area limits the biofuel potential and thus Wissing's climate protection options - while the climate effect alone affects the agricultural sector managed by Cem Özdemir (Greens). is credited.

The sectoral blame is also in contradiction to the "sector coupling", which had been the guiding principle of the energy transition so far: The decarbonization of transport, buildings, energy production should therefore be considered together in order to leverage synergies. The Climate Protection Act tore this integrated planning apart again and forced individual departments to take hasty, uncoordinated and ineffective immediate measures.

The Expert Council for Climate Issues, which according to the law is supposed to act as a kind of independent notary to check compliance with the sector targets, has been pointing out the deficits of the Climate Protection Act for years. The coalition committee has now implemented some important suggestions for improvement made by the professorial committee. That deserves more praise than criticism. The traffic light parties only deliver what climate protectionists demand from politicians: they follow science.

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