Germany's government will focus on partnerships at the UN Cop 30 climate conference starting in Belem, Brazil, next week, and has defended the compromise reached by EU environment ministers on key EU climate targets.
German federal climate minister Carsten Schneider argued the EU agreement is proof that the nationally determined contributions (NDC) mechanism under the Paris Agreement — which demands updated national climate plans every five years — is "working", and there is "no reason for resignation and fatalism".
But Schneider conceded "times have changed" regarding climate policy, reflected in the US' withdrawal from the climate deal.
Schneider admitted he "would have preferred the 72.5pc" instead of the compromise 66.25-72.5pc range agreed by ministers for the EU's 2035 emissions cut target against a 1990 baseline, which will constitute the bloc's NDC submission.
It would be up to another government to take the "political" decision of whether Germany would make use of the agreed flexibility of 5pc of international carbon credits to reach the EU's 2040 target, Schneider said, which differs from the 3pc limit agreed in the German government's coalition treaty and upheld by Schneider in the Brussels negotiations.
Regarding the EU ministers' call for a slower phase-out of free allowances under the bloc's emissions trading system (ETS), Schneider argued "not every change is an abandonment".
And postponing the introduction of the EU's planned emissions trading system for the heating and building sectors (ETS 2) by one year to 2028 — dubbed a "disaster" by the opposition Green party in Germany's lower house of parliament the Bundestag today — is "not relevant", Schneider said, underlining the novelty of the instrument and the fear of high prices in some eastern European countries.
Schneider pledged that the government will find ways to avoid price spikes in Germany's domestic carbon price system, which was meant to merge with the EU ETS 2 in 2027, and which operates under a fixed price until this year but will move to a tender system within a price corridor from 2026.
Germany's contributions to Cop 30 also include "optimism and confidence", Schneider said, stressing it is crucial to "keep things running" following the US' exit. A situation similar to last month's International Maritime Organisation meeting, where a decision to adopt a global emissions pricing mechanism for international shipping was postponed under pressure from the US, "must not happen again", Schneider said.
Germany's development ministry aims to "test" strategic alliances and forge new climate partnerships at Cop 30, development minister Reem Alabali Radovan said, which also benefit Germany and its companies through interest rates paid and demand for clean technologies.
But given Germany's "difficult" budgetary situation, and the fact that both the US and some European countries have reduced their financial commitments, it will be crucial to win over other partners, Alabali Radovan said. The private sector must play a greater role, as must the large economies that in the past decades have shed their developing status, such as the larger Gulf economies, she said.
