Source: Energy & Management Powernews, 07 January 2022
The Federal Republic is moving further away from its self-imposed climate targets, criticizes the think tank Agora Energiewende. On the new climate protection minister comes a lot of work to do.
According to calculations by the think tank Agora Energiewende, Germany risks missing its climate protection target for the year 2030. "On the one hand, 2021 is the year in which Germany set itself the most ambitious climate targets in the history of the Federal Republic," explained Simon Müller, Germany director at Agora and one of the study's authors. "On the other hand, the implementation gap continues to grow, which the new German government must now urgently close with effective climate protection measures," he demanded.
According to the analysis "The energy transition in Germany: state of play 2021," emissions of climate-damaging gases amounted to 772 million tons of greenhouse gases last year, according to preliminary Agora calculations. This represents a significant increase of 33 million metric tons compared to 2020, when the German economy was weakening on the one hand due to the Corona crisis and on the other hand generated a particularly large amount of electricity from wind power due to favorable weather conditions. In addition, there were particularly cold months at the beginning of 2021.
Big gap even without special effects
But even beyond such one-off effects, Germany is moving away from the path of CO2 savings that would be needed on average per year to achieve the German government's climate target for 2030, the Agora experts complain. According to the Climate Protection Act, greenhouse gas emissions are to be 65% lower than in 1990 by then, and the longer the current trend continues, the more efforts will be needed later. "Due to the increase in emissions in 2021, we will have to save an average of 37 million tons of CO2 every year from now on in order to meet the 2030 target," Müller explained.
A major reason for the increased CO2 emissions, according to the study, is also the relative prices of various energy sources. The share of renewable energies is still comparatively low, it said, added to which there have been dramatic increases in gas prices. The in return rising attractiveness of climate-damaging coal as an energy source could not compensate also the CO2 price, with which enterprises must buy rights for the output of climaticdamaging gases.
Quickly more renewable energy necessarily
The portion of the renewable energies of the power consumption was according to Agora in the past year with 42,3%, which is 3,3% less than in the year before. In their coalition agreement, the SPD, Greens and FDP have set themselves the goal of increasing the share to 80% in 2030. This requires "a massive and rapid expansion of wind and solar plants," Müller explained. The current pace is not sufficient for this, he said. For example, he said, wind turbines and solar plants with a total capacity of only 6,700 MW had been newly built in 2021, bringing the total installed capacity to 137,000 MW at last count.
In terms of specific targets for the various sectors of the economy, Agora said that industry, the electricity sector and agriculture had achieved their 2021 targets. However, the building sector and transport missed them again. Agora Energiewende's analyses are based, among other things, on figures from the Arbeitsgemeinschaft Energiebilanzen, but also on its own calculations. The figures are still provisional. The German government is yet to present its own preliminary figures on CO2 emissions for 2021. There is final data only with approximately two years delay.
Claims to the policy
Still for the current year, the think tank demanded from the policy an "expansion offensive for solar energy", as Müller said. In addition, enough areas for wind power would have to be secured and the expansion and conversion of the energy networks planned. Federal Climate Protection Minister Robert Habeck (Greens) had recently announced additional efforts in climate protection. "We will probably still miss our targets for 2022, even for 2023 it will be hard enough," he had told the weekly newspaper Die Zeit. Referring to the reduction of climate-damaging greenhouse gases, he explained, "We are starting with a drastic backlog."
The Agora analysis "The energy transition in Germany: state of play 2021" can be found as a PDF for download on the Agora Energiewende site.
Author: Susanne Harmsen