"Climate failures"

In an opinion piece for Süddeutsche Zeitung, Michael Bauchmüller asks if Chancellor Angela Merkel can be trusted, after the parties in exploratory talks to form a new grand coalition government dropped Germany’s 2020 climate target. The outgoing coalition government between conservative CDU/CSU and centre-left SPD failed on climate protection, Bauchmüller writes. Despite various action plans and the expansion of renewable power generation, emissions barely budged. They now stand at just 27 pecent below 1990s levels, well short of the 2020 goal of 40 percent reduction. Bauchmüller says tougher measures are needed: either the decommissioning of coal-fired power stations or a higher price on CO2 emissions. But both parties have lost credibility on climate policy, he writes.

See the article in German here.

See CLEW's report on the development here and the CLEW factsheet on Germany's emissions and climate targets here.