California vows stronger climate cooperation with Germany on sidelines of COP30

Germany and the US state of California will deepen cooperation on climate action and renewable energy, the German environment ministry said on the sidelines of the UN climate change conference COP30 in Brazil. California signed a joint statement with German state Baden-Württemberg pledging closer cooperation working towards a climate neutral economy.

The agreement sends “a strong signal for the USA’s ongoing commitment to international climate policy,” the German ministry said. Despite the US government’s rejection of international climate commitments under president Donald Trump, “large parts of the US continue to stand firmly behind climate action.” The environment ministry’s state secretary Jochen Flasbarth stressed that Germany and California have been cooperating on climate and clean energy for years and that “the dynamic at the state level is growing.”

The EU’s and the US’s largest economies first intensified their bilateral climate action efforts in 2016 and California and Baden-Württemberg together founded the Under2 Coalition to facilitate cooperation at the subnational level. Key fields of cooperation under the latest agreement include renewable energy expansion, resilient grids, hydrogen, storage, circular economy, water management, and climate adaptation. The two states agreed an exchange of best practices and on legislation and policy plans, while exploring further initiatives to promote the deepening of ties.

California’s governor Gavin Newsom, who presided with state secretary Flasbarth over the agreement’s signing, said that “the United States of America is as dumb as we want to be on this topic, but the state of California is not,” news site DW reported. “And so we are going to assert ourselves, we're going to lean in, and we are going to compete in this space,” Newsom said.