The grand coalition continues its “active policy against climate protection” – opinion

Germany’s new and old coalition of Chancellor Angela Merkel’s conservatives and the Social Democrats (SPD) have “made a shambles of the successful pro-climate and pro-renewables policy of the SPD-Greens coalition” in the early 2000s, Green politician Hans-Josef Fell writes in an op-ed for pv magazine. The new coalition agreement by the conservative CDU/CSU alliance and the SPD “lacks any will to actively address humanity’s big challenges with big concepts,” the co-author of Germany’s first Renewables Act (EEG) says. Together with the pro-business FDP, the parties have caused a dramatic drop in investments in renewables, from 40.3 billion dollars in 2010 to 14.6 billion dollars in 2017, Fell argues. “Germany’s annual greenhouse gas emissions have been rising for years instead of being quickly reduced to zero,” he says. Instead of initiating a significant turnaround in “ineffective support schemes”, the coalition agreement is instead teeming with the same old, ineffective schemes that will ultimately contribute to the failure of the Paris Climate Agreement’s goals, Fell says. 

Read the opinion piece in German here.

 Find background in the CLEW articles Germany's coalition negotiators agree treaty, promise coal exit date and Reactions to Germany's coalition agreement, and the factsheet Climate, energy and transport in Germany's coalition agreement.