Despite the Paris Agreement and the commitment of most German parties to the common climate goals, none of the election programs manage to keep them.
All democratic parties claim that if they participate in government they will do everything to ensure that the 1.5 degree target is met. According to an analysis of the party programs by the concept work Neue Ökonomie, none of the parties can keep their promises.
As this shows, a CO2 budget of around 1.2 gigatons would be available for a 67 percent chance of meeting the climate target – with a probability of 50 percent even 2.9 gigatons. The CO2 budget specifies the maximum amount of CO2 that can be produced in order to achieve the respective target.
All parties estimate that the CO2 budget is too high
In their programs, the parties in the Bundestag do not provide any explicit information on a targeted climate budget, which is why the New Economy concept uses international data from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and data from the German Government’s Advisory Council as reference values to quantify the parties’ measures with a CO2 budget. The result: the ideas of the Bundestag parties are well above the 1.5 degree values.
The Left Party proposes the most radical emission reductions and would like to have achieved climate neutrality by 2035. Even their estimated CO2 budget of 4.9 gigatons is well above the recommended value. The party program of the FDP sounds the least concerned about CO2 emissions – with the planned CO2 budget of 10.7 gigatons, less than 1.75 degrees could be achieved with a 50 percent probability.
FDP only relies on emissions trading
In their concept, the Liberals primarily rely on emissions trading, in which emissions rights are bought from other countries that are able to meet their limits. This means that budgets can be adhered to, but the incentive to effectively prevent emissions is of course weaker for rich countries. However, there is no mechanism at the global level to ensure that everyone adheres to the savings.
In purely arithmetical terms, the coming federal government will be the last that can initiate all measures to still achieve the 1.5 degree target. However, all parties lack political will, as the contents of the election manifestos illustrate.
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