03-05-07

German Environment Minister Sigmar Gabriel has unveiled an eight-point climate-change action plan, promising to cut the country's greenhouse-gas emissions by 40% before 2020, or double the amount pledged by the EU as a whole.
The new German plan to slash greenhouse-gas emissions by 40% before 2020 goes beyond the EU's commitment formulated by EU leaders at their Spring Summit in March. During that meeting, the EU-27 promised a unilateral 20% reduction by 2020, increasing even to 30% in the event of large economic powers such as the US and China following suit.

Berlin's Climate Agenda 2020 calls for a "transformation of the industrial society". In order to reach its 40% target (a reduction of 270 mm tons of CO2), the document proposes eight measures:

-- Modernising power stations (- 30 mm tons);
-- doubling the amount of combined heat and power (CHP) use (- 20 mm tons);
-- increasing the share of renewables in electricity production to 27% (- 55 mm tons);
-- cutting electricity consumption by 11% (- 40 mm tons);
-- improving energy efficiency of buildings (- 41 mm tons);
-- using more renewables for heating (- 14 mm tons);
-- increasing fuel and engine efficiency in transport and more use of biofuels (- 30 mm tons), and;
-- reducing emissions of other (non-CO2) gases such as methane or F-gases.

Gabriel's plan explicitly rejects a revival of nuclear power and sticks to the coalition comprise between the SPD (Social Democrats) and CDU-CSU (Christian Democrats) to phase-out atomic energy. The investment costs for these plans would be EUR 3 bn, whereas climate change could lead to damage costs of EUR 137 bn, the report states in a short paragraph on financing.
Germany is clearly trying to position itself as climate-change leader in the run-up to the June G8 meeting in Heiligendamm.



Source: Euractive