The climate protection programme recently adopted by the German Federal Government is unlikely to be enough to achieve the 2030 climate targets.
This was the submission on Monday, October 14, 2019 by the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK) and the Mercator Research Institute on Global Commons and Climate Change (MCC).
The German climate package is intended to limit greenhouse gas emissions especially in the transport and heating sectors.
In a detailed assessment of the package carried out by PIK and MCC, the organisations want the government to adopt remedial measures by raising the level of ambition for the carbon price; improving social balance; further developing its integration with the EU level; and introducing an effective monitoring process.
The assessment was prepared by a team of five authors led by PIK and MCC Director Ottmar Edenhofer.
In July, the team delivered the 100-page expert report “Options for a Carbon Pricing Reform”, which Edenhofer then presented to the Climate Cabinet in the presence of the Chancellor, Angela Merkel.
The idea of a three-stage carbon pricing (first a fixed price, then a national emissions trading scheme, and finally integration into the EU emissions trading scheme) was introduced as an option in the expert report.
This was, in principle, implemented in the climate package on a one-to-one basis, but much more timidly than recommended, with initially a price of only €10 per tonne of CO2. Instead, the PIK-MCC authors recommended a starting price of €50 per tonne.
“The climate package is at best an indication of a change of direction, but this has not yet taken place,” says Edenhofer. “Now it comes to the task of making adjustments during the next steps, develop carbon pricing as the core instrument of climate policy and raise the price to an appropriate level. Our paper provides well-founded input for that. An important factor is the planned, but at the moment still too weak, monitoring by an independent expert council.”
