Test report: Expert advice on climate issues: Mild weather saves the climate balance

Volker Wissing’s blustering threat of a car driving ban on weekends has probably had an effect. On Monday morning, the Expert Council for Climate Issues tried to increase the pressure on Wissing to launch an immediate climate protection program with its annual test report. This is how the CO should₂-The budget of the transport sector must be adhered to. On Monday afternoon, the traffic light government made the new one Climate Protection Act throw a spanner in the works. Now the annual sector targets will be abolished. What will count in the future is whether Overall climate goals can be achieved.

This is despite the fact that the expert council confirmed in its report the recent statement by the Federal Environment Agency (UBA) that traffic will reduce its CO in 2023₂budget was exceeded by almost 13 million tonnes. The renewed failure to meet the sector target was “clear,” stated the chairman of the expert council, Hans-Martin Henning. All in all, the council follows the UBA calculations and verifies the sharp decline in CO₂-Emissions from 2022 to 2023 by around ten percent from 750 million to 674 million tons. The energy, industrial and building sectors in particular have high CO levels₂-Reductions achieved.

Nevertheless, according to UBA, the building sector emitted one million tonnes of CO in 2023₂ more than permitted in the Climate Protection Act. According to the wording of the old law, an immediate program must be presented for the buildings and for traffic by mid-July, emphasized Henning. He deliberately referred to the “wording.” The old climate law, which set fixed sector guidelines for each ministry, was binding for the expert council. It was precisely this annoying duty that Wissing wanted to get rid of with the threatened driving bans.

The climate gap in transport is already so large that only “a little bit” can be achieved with a single measure, said Expert Council deputy head Brigitte Knopf on Monday. In her opinion, an “expanded package of measures” would be necessary in this area. At the same time, Knopf and Henning made it clear that the FDP’s solution – abolishing the obligation for every ministry to adhere to the sector target and allowing “offsetting” with other sectors – has its pitfalls.

Because without the CO₂– Declines in energy-intensive industries such as steel, basic chemicals and paper and without the renewed mild weather, emissions would have been significantly higher in 2023, Henning made clear. The expert council included these influencing factors in its test report. He came up with a rough estimate that under normal circumstances almost 75 million tons of CO₂ more would have been emitted. The CO achieved in 2023₂According to Henning’s assessment, the decline is based to a “significant extent” on developments whose durability is not guaranteed.

In an evaluation published last week, the think tank Agora Energiewende also looked at the proportion of “concrete” climate protection and how this influences the expected CO2₂-Reduction estimated at just a fifth by 2030.

It is no coincidence that the expert council’s test report also offers some detailed reasons to be concerned about long-term effective trends in climate protection. Even if the share of fossil heating systems fell overall, more fossil heat generators were sold in 2023 than ever before, at 903,000 units. In particular, according to the information, the proportion of gas heating in the housing stock rose to 49.5 percent. The additional gas heating led to additional emissions of around 200,000 tons of CO₂-Equivalent to. The expert council sees the risk of a fossil lock-in effect here because the new heating systems would often run for 20 years or longer.

The Expert Council is particularly concerned about the Climate and Transformation Fund. Following the Federal Constitutional Court’s ruling last November, the fund’s resources were cut by a total of almost 42 billion euros, including 4.6 billion this year. In addition, the financial reserves of the climate fund will have practically “completely melted away” this year, explained Brigitte Knopf: “The scope for climate protection in the coming years has therefore become significantly smaller.”

According to the Expert Council for Climate Issues, there are also a number of measures in transport that do not deliver what politicians promised. In 2023 – if all new car registrations and de-registrations are taken into account – the number of pure combustion cars fell by almost 633,000 vehicles. At the same time, however, the number of hybrid vehicles grew by 573,000, so that overall the fossil fuel population only fell by 0.1 percent last year.

In addition, truck freight traffic decreased in 2023 due to weak industrial demand, while car traffic increased, the expert council continued. Working from home doesn’t produce CO either₂-Saving effects that were hoped for. Furthermore, the CO₂-Reducing effect of the Germany ticket has not yet been determined. “There will be a significant gap in the transport sector until 2030,” said Knopf. From a climate perspective, Wissing has apparently already thrown in the towel. It doesn’t look like he’ll be doing the same politically any time soon.