The Green Gap - 8 points on how serious the black-red coalition really is about our climate future
Given the outcome of the federal election, a coalition between the CDU/CSU and SPD is the most likely outcome. But will climate protection be neglected without the Greens? We show what the parties are planning and what they could agree on.
If there was one thing that worked better under the traffic light coalition than before, it was climate policy. The expansion targets for solar systems and battery storage were recently exceeded by far in some cases, and the gap in wind energy expansion was at least closed. The Building Energy Act introduced an important building block for climate neutrality in the building sector, and the Deutschlandticket at least attempted to get people to switch from cars to trains. However, we are still lagging behind when it comes to expanding these, expanding the power grids and electromobility.
With the Greens, the biggest driver behind Germany's climate protection is definitely missing from a new federal government. The most likely option at the moment is a coalition of the CDU/CSU and SPD, which would have 328 seats in the Bundestag. 316 are enough for a majority. The Union parties in particular had vehemently railed against green politics before the election. A legitimate concern would therefore be that climate protection in Germany would be scaled back when Friedrich Merz takes office. This is what the potential coalition partners are planning.
Even before the current election, the last grand coalition had passed the Climate Protection Act in 2019. It stipulates that Germany's pollutant emissions should be reduced by 65 percent below 1990 levels by 2030, then by 88 percent by 2040 and finally by 100 percent by 2045. In 2021, the Federal Constitutional Court ruled that the main savings should not be postponed until after 2030 in order not to place too heavy a burden on future generations.
In addition, as a member of the EU, Germany has committed itself to the "Green Deal", which provides for similar climate protection goals for the entire European Union , and is a signatory to the Paris Climate Agreement, which includes goals to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees. Neither the CDU nor the CSU and SPD plan to change these general goals or, like the USA, to withdraw from the Paris Agreement. All climate protection measures must therefore serve these goals in the future.
The expansion plans are not to be changed. Only the direction differs slightly. The SPD relies mainly on wind power and photovoltaics and does not mention other forms of renewable energy at all in its election manifesto. It is counting on these two forms providing the cheapest electricity. The CDU/CSU wants to use even more and explicitly mentions geothermal energy, hydropower, bioenergy (from agricultural waste or liquid manure, for example) and wood. However, none of the manifestos contain exact figures on what should be produced by when and in what quantities.
They have been planned for years, but are repeatedly delayed due to local and regional opposition. The CDU/CSU now wants to build these routes as overhead lines, i.e. above ground. This is cheaper than cables laid underground, but has to be fought through against resistance from citizens.
The second difference to today's power grids is that renewable energy sources do not always supply electricity when it is needed, but rather when the sun shines or the wind blows. The solution to this is battery storage, and Germany is well on its way to installing it, but the challenging milestones will not follow until 2026.
But what the two potential coalition partners write about this in their election manifestos doesn't sound very encouraging. The SPD doesn't mention aspects such as network expansion. The CDU deals with the topic in a few vague sentences. They want an "efficient link" of renewable energies, networks and storage and an "integrated network expansion". In addition, the focus should be on "standardizing" various networks such as electricity, heat, gas and hydrogen. What exactly that means is not explained. The SPD also talks about municipal heating networks without going into detail.
But the difference in financing is interesting. The Union wants to attract private investors to build the networks, who would then presumably be paid for their investments through network fees. The Union still has to work out how this will pay off if network fees are to be reduced at the same time. The SPD is relying on debt-based financing via a special fund called the "Germany Fund". This is unlikely to be possible with the Union. So how the necessary network expansion will be financed in the coming years remains an exciting topic - with potential for conflict.
An important point in the Union's program is called the "nuclear energy option." In it, the sister parties plan, on the one hand, to examine the reactivation of the nuclear power plants that will be shut down in 2023, and, on the other hand, promise more research into modern nuclear power plants, small modular reactors (SMR) and nuclear fusion.
None of this will happen. Neither the operators themselves want reactivation, and the potential coalition partner SPD has also ruled it out. SMRs have never progressed beyond the concept stage in 50 years and are impractical in the opinion of the Federal Office for the Safety of Nuclear Waste Management (BASE), modern nuclear power plants would take 10 to 20 years to build and would therefore not help with climate goals, and nuclear fusion would not reach a prototype stage for at least 20 years. However, it is not certain whether this will stop the Union from wasting money here.
The Union would like to abolish the "Heating Act", but that is unlikely to happen with the SPD, which has only just introduced it. In addition, the CDU/CSU's objection that they want to "promote and use low-emission heating solutions that are open to all technologies", especially wood, is nonsense. Firstly, the law already allows any technology based on renewable energies, and secondly, wood does not do that, but would literally fuel climate change. If the Union stubbornly wants to abolish the law, however, it would have to replace it with one that ensures climate neutrality in the building sector by 2045 - so hardly anything would change for consumers.
By "green gas" the Union means gas for heating that is produced from renewable sources. This is likely to be mainly biomethane from biomass, but it may also include blue and turquoise hydrogen. The former is obtained from natural gas, which already produces CO2 as a waste product. The latter is obtained from the methane in natural gas, the waste product here being solid carbon. Green heating oil, on the other hand, is heating oil that is also obtained from agricultural products.
The Union's argument here is that these forms are climate-neutral because combustion only releases the CO2 that the plants have previously stored. But this is a fallacy, because storage takes years, while heating releases it in seconds. This would therefore be much worse for Germany's climate goals than heat pumps or green hydrogen, for example.
It is unclear what the SPD would support. The topic of heating does not even appear in their election manifesto.
Also on the Union’s agenda is to promote research into technologies that can be used to separate CO2 from the air. They are called Carbon Capture and Utilization (CCU), Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) and Direct Air Capture (DACCS) . Basically, all three things involve either capturing CO2 as it is created, for example in a factory, or separating it from the air. The latter is much more complicated. The captured CO2 can then be chemically converted into other forms such as e-fuels or plastics, or stored underground in rock. Experts are skeptical of these technologies. So far, they have not been economically viable on a large scale because of the high energy consumption. However, if further developed, they could become a building block in the fight against climate change. The International Energy Agency (IEA) is of this opinion.
The SPD also has no opinion on this issue.
Pure nature conservation is also important for climate protection. The CDU/CSU and SPD agree that more should be done here. For example, nature reserves should be designed to protect endangered species, and incentives should be created for the expansion of moors. In the North and Baltic Seas, old munitions from the Second World War should be removed at greater expense and more marine conservation areas should be designated.
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