Lützerath: damage to Germany’s climate reputation + COP28: fossils and renewables + First CDR report

The images from Lützerath protests not only weigh heavily on German politics, but also on Germany’s global climate image. On the one hand promoting coal and clearing protests, in some cases by force, on the other hand pleading for more ambition at COP conferences? This is seen as hypocrisy. Germany is still stuck in the 20th century, says Richard Klein of the Stockholm Environment Institute. According to Klein, Germany lacks a coherent strategy for climate action and the energy transition.

That would also help with the next COP host. The United Arab Emirates has appointed Sultan Ahmed Al-Jaber, head of the government-owned oil company, as COP president. He attempts to strike a balance between fossil fuels and climate action and wants to decarbonize oil and gas – in other words, save climate action and his country’s business model, as Bernhard Pötter reports. Can this work?

Big green promises are also associated with carbon dioxide removal technologies. So far, however, they remove very little CO2 from the air. The authors of a first global CDR stocktaking say: Policymakers need to create the conditions for new technologies to grow very quickly. But so far, many governments seem clueless.