CLEW Primer for international journalists: Climate policy at heart of Germany's most unpredictable election in decades

The race for the German Chancellery has been more open and unpredictable than any other in the country’s post-war history. For the first time in modern Germany, the name of the acting chancellor will not appear on the ballot. And in another historic first, the country’s three main political parties and their chancellor candidates are head-to-head in the polls a mere month before the vote.
Merkel's conservative CDU/CSU alliance had appeared to have every reason to expect its chancellor candidate Armin Laschet to gain the upper hand in the battle to succeed Merkel, but a corruption scandal at the height of the coronavirus pandemic and the handling of deadly floods in July, widely believed to be linked to climate change, have dealt severe blows to the conservatives' election hopes. Meanwhile, the Green Party has had a good shot at entering government as it temporarily overtook to conservatives in the polls. But the Greens' surge faded away as rapidly as it came along due to a series of campaign blunders and missteps by their top candidate Annalena Baerbock. Nevertheless, her party is still polling much stronger than ever before and has a good chance to become part of the next government coalition. His competitors’ recent misfortunes have allowed the Social Democrats' (SPD) candidate Olaf Scholz to emerge as the unlikely beneficiary.The current finance minister and vice chancellor long was thought to be an also-ran in the election but suddenly stands a real a chance to lead his party to victory.

Clean Energy Wire invites journalists from around the world who are interested in what the Bundestagswahl 2021 holds for German and international climate and energy policy to a web meeting two weeks before the election. Tune in to us and our policy expert guests on 14 September at 4pm CEST to discuss whether the vote would result in an earlier coal exit for Germany; what industry and environmental groups hope for; which coalition could deliver best on implementing the country's ambitious climate targets; how the new carbon pricing system has altered voters' perception of climate action; and who, if anyone, could get a grip on the country's lagging renewable power expansion, the basis of all of Germany's emissions reduction plans.

We want to help you get prepared for Germany's most unpredictable election in decades and provide the tools for your reporting on the federal election and on two simultaneous regional votes in Berlin, Germany's bustling transport transition lab, and Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, a coastal state with lots of wind power and where the internationally disputed Nord Stream 2 pipeline that brings Russian gas to Europe will land in Germany.

To make our debate as productive and lively as possible, we encourage you to think of a few questions that nag you the most regarding the practicalities and sometimes contradictory aims of Germany's emissions reduction plans and what they mean in the greater context of international climate action.

Find more information on climate and energy in the election year in our dossier and stay up to date on CLEW's Twitter feed under the tag #BTW21