The small details sometimes decide whether big promises succeed. This is the case with the ambitious renewables expansion targets agreed upon at COP28 in Dubai. Their success depends, above all, on sufficient power grids. Nico Beckert discovered that the situation is so dire that the two responsible energy agencies, the IEA and IRENA, now warn that the COP plans could fail.
Meanwhile, a signal against the expansion of fossil fuels comes from Norway: A court has decided that Europe’s largest oil and gas producer must put the development of new drilling fields on hold. The reason: The plans failed to consider the potential impact on the climate.
In turn, internal EU plans suggest that the electricity sector will continue to emit fossil fuels until 2050, which must be disposed of using CCS, even though the Europeans have actually agreed on an electricity system that is supposed to first and foremost be “decarbonized.”
Things are going back and forth in climate and energy policy. We’ll keep our eyes open for you. The entire team hopes you enjoy our 100th Climate.Table and all future issues!
One of the biggest successes at COP28 – the decision to triple renewable energy capacity by 2030 – is being jeopardized by the slow expansion of power grids. Now, Francesco La Camera, Director-General of the International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA), warns in an interview with Table.Media: “Without addressing the urgent infrastructure needs, the world will not be able to accelerate the energy transition to limit the temperature increase to 1.5 degrees“. La Camera adds: “Globally, investments in the power grid have lagged behind those in renewable energies.” They must be “significantly increased.”
The International Energy Agency (IEA) backs this warning with concrete numbers: The goal of tripling renewables could be missed by around 20 percent worldwide. “Insufficient investment in the grid infrastructure” is preventing a faster expansion of renewables, according to the IEA. This, in turn, means that fossil fuels would have to remain on the grid for longer and emissions would be higher than necessary.
Kristian Ruby is Secretary General of Eurelectric, an association representing 3,500 European companies from the electricity generation, distribution, and supply sectors. He calls for an “ambitious investment and expansion plan for the grids” in Europe. Over the last five years, the EU has set “extremely ambitious targets for the expansion of renewables.” The “pace of expansion of the power grids” must now be “significantly increased,” Ruby told Table.Media. Otherwise, the power grid will become a “bottleneck for the energy transition.”
La Camera urges countries to “prepare for the large amounts of renewable energy that will be connected to the grid in the coming decades.” Grid investments should be made “three to five years ahead of investments in renewables.” The stalling grid expansion is a global problem. In the United States, outdated and poorly developed grids threaten the climate effects of the government’s multi-billion dollar Inflation Reduction Act. In China, several provinces and cities are no longer able to connect new solar projects to the grid due to insufficient capacity. According to the IEA, “grid bottlenecks must also be overcome” in Japan, South Korea and Australia to enable the faster expansion of renewables.
Stable and developed power grids form the basic building block for the energy transition and a decarbonized economy:
However, grid expansion is not keeping pace with the expansion of renewables. In the recent past, the reserves of the power grid have been used to connect renewables to the grid, Leonhard Birnbaum, President of the industry association Eurelectric and CEO of Eon, told Reuters. But “In more and more regions of Europe, we’ve just used up the reserves,” said Birnbaum.
If grid expansion is too slow, solar and wind power plants feed less electricity into the grid or cannot be connected to the grid at all:
The reasons for the slow expansion are manifold. La Camera insists on “accelerated approval procedures to ensure timely investment in modern electricity grids.” Ruby from Eurelectric considers this acceleration to be a “key point” for grid expansion.
A court in Oslo declared the license awarding for three oil fields in Norway invalid. The judges ruled that a legally required assessment of the climate damage caused by the planned combustion of the oil was missing. Experts believe that the first-instance ruling will not directly impact Norway’s oil production. However, it could lead to more publicity and a debate about the climate impact of Norwegian oil production.
Greenpeace and Natur og Ungdom filed a lawsuit against the government’s approval of a license (known as the “Plans for Development and Operation”) for the three oil fields Breidablikk, Tyrving and Yggdrasil on the Norwegian continental shelf in the North Sea.
The ruling by the Oslo District Court (tingrett) is a clear defeat for the state. The court has made it clear that an impact assessment of the emissions from the combustion of the extracted oil is required by law. However, the state failed to conduct such a study before granting licenses to develop and extract the fields.
The court stated that an assessment of the climate impact, including the resulting increase in global temperature, and a public consultation are important for a well-founded and correct decision basis. This would ensure that dissenting voices are heard and considered, and that the decision-making basis is verifiable and available to the public.
“The decisions are invalid because the lack of an impact assessment of potential adverse effects on life and health from the combustion emissions,” reads the ruling handed down on January 18.
Oil production at the Breidablikk oil field operated by Equinor began in October 2023. The production permit is issued for one year at a time and expires on December 31, 2024. The Tyrving oil field is expected to start production in 2025 and the Yggdrasil field in 2027. Both fields are operated by Aker BP. Yggdrasil will produce oil, gas and NGL (Natural Gas Liquid).
The ruling does not stop production in Breidablikk. But the state must now ensure that the decision, which the court has declared invalid, is “repaired” before the production license can be renewed, comments Sigrid Eskeland Schütz, a law professor at the University of Bergen, in an interview with the website Energi og Klima.
According to Schütz, this means that additional studies need to be conducted into the environmental impact of the combustion of extracted oil abroad. The greenhouse gas emissions from oil and gas combustion are much higher than the emissions generated during production.
” The reports must then be submitted for consultation, with the usual deadline, and then the matter must be finally reassessed,” says Schütz. She believes that the ministry can complete this process relatively quickly. The government will have to make new decisions for Tyrving and Yggdrasil before production can begin.
The Ministry of Energy is considering filing an appeal against the ruling. Experts expect the case to go all the way to the Supreme Court. However, Schütz believes there is no contradiction between carrying out new analyses, as required by the ruling, and appealing against it.
A 2020 Supreme Court ruling states that the environmental impact of a project must be assessed, including emissions. The ruling of the Oslo court refers to this Supreme Court decision.
Several political parties believe the ruling should have consequences for all oil projects approved by the state after 2020. That is a total of 22 projects.
“We can only understand that the same procedural error applies to all licenses for new oil and gas production granted after the Supreme Court’s ruling,” Lars Haltbrekken, energy policy spokesman for the Socialist Left Party in the Norwegian parliament, told Aftenposten.
Experts agree with the parties: The same mistakes apply to all license decisions made after 2020, lawyer Anders Flaatin Wilhelmsen from the law firm Selmer told the newspaper Dagens Næringsliv. He represented the case on the climate impact of oil production before the Supreme Court in 2020 on behalf of the Norwegian state.
Wilhelmsen sees the court ruling as a big win for the environmental movement. Nevertheless, he believes that the consequences for Norwegian oil policy will be limited. “The ruling has no significance for the Norwegian oil industry. It is only about the factual basis on which decisions about production, exploration and so on must be made,” he told Dagens Næringsliv.
Sigrid Schütz shares this view: “It’s still a political decision. So the result could be exactly the same as it is today, but probably more knowledge-based.” In the long term, it is conceivable that increasing knowledge about the effects on the climate could influence the political decisions on oil policy that are made in parliament, she emphasizes.
However, the signals from the government in recent months do not indicate a change of direction in Norway’s oil policy. The decision at COP28 in December to initiate a global phase-out of fossil fuels “changes nothing for Norway,” commented Energy Minister Terje Aasland on the agreement in Dubai.
On January 16, two days before the Oslo court ruling, Aasland’s ministry announced the designation of 62 new areas for the exploration of oil deposits on the Norwegian Continental Shelf. If discoveries relevant to production are made, a process for exploiting the discovery and finally granting a production license will be initiated.
In November, a group of experts called for a plan to phase out oil and gas production. The government quickly rejected the proposal. As usual, after such reports, a broad public consultation was initiated. The first phase of the consultation is still on
Ms. Stiem-Bhatia, why are healthy soils so crucial for the climate?
They are the largest carbon sinks and important water reservoirs, even more so than forests. This is very important for climate adaptation. After all, most arable land – in Germany and worldwide – is not irrigated artificially, meaning it has to make do with natural rainfall. Healthy soil helps plants survive periods of drought, absorbs water and thus help prevent flooding.
About climate action: How much CO2 is stored in our soils?
Calculations from 2017 concluded that a total of 680 billion tons of CO2 are stored in soils and 560 billion tons in forests worldwide. Model calculations assume that soils worldwide can hold another two to five billion tons of CO2 every year. By comparison, global carbon emissions are currently around 57 billion tons.
How reliable are such figures?
Soils are a very volatile carbon sink. That much needs to be said. As soon as cultivation methods change, but also due to forest fires or droughts, the carbon can quickly escape from the soil.
And what is the situation right now? Do soils release more CO2 or store it?
There are no measurements that are accurate and comprehensive enough to provide a global overview. Whether soil releases or stores CO2 depends on many factors. Take peatlands in Germany, for example: they are largely drained and therefore release CO2. But if peatlands are rewetted, they become a CO2 sink once again.
Healthy soils help prevent flooding. Did this help during this winter’s flooding disaster in Germany?
This varied greatly from region to region. In Germany, we have built on and sealed a lot of natural floodplains. Sealed soils can absorb practically no water. Despite this, 55 hectares of land continue to be converted for housing and transportation every day in Germany. We are far from the government’s target of reducing this to 30 hectares by 2030 and net zero by 2050. This land policy is a problem. In addition, our intensive agriculture, which uses heavy machinery, excessive mineral fertilizers and pesticides, degrades the soil. This reduces its capacity to absorb water and hinders the important build-up of humus.
How could politics reward agriculture that preserves the humus in the soil?
EU payments under the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) should be more closely linked to soil conservation or humus levels. In general, organic farming should receive much more financial support to make it worthwhile for farmers to make the switch and invest in soil conservation. Ultimately, they are also providing a service to society as a whole.
There are tradable carbon credits that reward the build-up of humus in the soil, similar to emissions trading. What do you think of this?
These soil carbon credits are not issued by public authorities, but by private institutions. The way they are currently designed, they are problematic for farmers, climate action, and human rights. They are often so cheap that they are not a significant income alternative for farmers and hardly an incentive for soil-conserving agriculture.
Where do you see the problems for climate action?
I see three problems: First, trading in cheap credits can easily lead to companies buying their way out of climate action. They purchase credits and mathematically offset their greenhouse gas emissions instead of actually reducing their emissions. There is also the question of how long the humus – and with it, the CO2 – remains in the soil. As soon as a farm reverts from sustainable farming to monocultures or high use of pesticides, the humus content in the soil can drop again very quickly. The CO2 stored in the soil is then released. And there is the risk of leakage: a farm cultivates a certain area sustainably and receives credits for this – but in return, it may rely even more heavily on intensive farming on the neighboring field. It would receive credits even if the overall humus level of its soil remained the same.
And what human rights problems do you see?
There have been cases in the Global South where people have been evicted from their land, which they have farmed for generations, to enable credit trading. Such credits can also reinforce gender inequalities. In many countries, landowners are primarily men, meaning women rarely benefit from compensation payments. It is important that carbon trading takes a human rights-based approach.
Land is scarce, and vast areas will be needed as sinks for the climate. How large are these areas?
Almost all national climate action commitments within the UNFCCC include measures for nature-based climate action, that is, for storing CO2 in soils and forests. If you combine them all, you get an area requirement of 1.2 billion hectares. That is about three times the size of the EU. To get closer to the net-zero target, we would have to change the type of land use on around 630 million hectares, for example, by reforesting arable land. But this is not empty land. People live there and the fields are their livelihood.
Is there even enough land to meet climate adaptation requirements, nature conservation and food security?
The various requirements are not necessarily mutually exclusive. Conservation agriculture, for example, stores more CO2 in the soil, strengthens resilience to climate change, benefits nature conservation and can increase income through crop diversification. Biodiversity, climate action and food security go hand in hand. Whether they are compatible ultimately depends very much on the type of agriculture practiced.
How realistic is it then to include soils to such an extent as a CO2 sink in national climate action targets?
Land may be scarce. But we need it for the climate. Even if we manage to phase out fossil fuels as quickly as possible, we still need nature to store CO2 in order to meet our climate targets. Healthier soils secure agricultural yields in the long term and also enable better climate change adaptation. So there is every reason to protect them better.
Larissa Stiem-Bhatia heads the program for nature-based solutions at the TMG Think Tank for Sustainability. She is the author of the recently published Soil Atlas 2024 by BUND, the Heinrich Böll Foundation and TMG.
The rapid expansion of renewables will continue over the next few years. According to new forecasts by the International Energy Agency (IEA), many countries will install more than twice as much renewable energy in the next six years as in the last six years. The growth forecasts for China are particularly impressive: the People’s Republic is expected to build the equivalent of every second solar and wind power plant installed worldwide. China will account for 56 percent of global expansion. “Over 2023-2028, China will deploy almost four times more renewable capacity than the European Union and five times more than the United States,” IEA analysts write.
Almost 3,700 gigawatts of new capacity will be added worldwide over the next six years – more than the total capacity of renewable energies currently installed worldwide. This means renewables will account for 42 percent of global electricity generation by 2028. By the beginning of 2025, they will replace coal as the largest power source. Wind power will already generate more electricity than nuclear power in 2025.
The expansion of renewables will be driven primarily by solar energy. Here, the IEA expects over 2,600 gigawatts of new capacity and over 800 gigawatts of onshore and offshore wind energy. By comparison, the IEA estimates that almost 510 gigawatts of new renewable energy capacity were built in 2023. However, the IEA also warns that growth could be even faster if hurdles are removed. And the wind power industry faces significant financial challenges in many countries. nib
The increased expansion of renewable energies in Germany is also reflected in the job market: In 2022, over 50,000 more people were employed in the sector than in the previous year, German Economy Minister Robert Habeck said on Table.Media’s German podcast Table.Today on Wednesday. That is an increase of 15 percent to 387,700 employees. “The efforts we are making in climate action are creating new added value,” said Habeck. According to the German Ministry for Economic Affairs and Climate Action, the majority of the new jobs were created in the solar energy and heat pump sectors. Biomass saw a smaller increase, while the number of jobs in wind power fell slightly despite rising expansion figures.
Habeck also remains optimistic about the future. Northvolt’s decision to invest in a new battery factory in Germany, for example, shows that the country can keep up with the competition – albeit with massive state subsidies. “I also believe that this subsidy race is not healthy,” said the Minister in the podcast. “On the other hand, you don’t want to stand by and watch and wave goodbye when the industry leaves.” Habeck also expects high levels of investment in the hydrogen sector.
A new study by the German Economic Institute (IW) on behalf of the Ruhr Regional Association shows that many new jobs will be created there too. The study will be published on Thursday and was made available to Table.Media in advance. According to the study, the development of the hydrogen economy will create around 8,700 new jobs in the Germany Ruhr region alone by 2023; this figure could rise to over 25,000 by 2045. In addition, the switch to hydrogen will secure thousands of existing jobs, for example in the steel industry. “If the ecological transformation succeeds, there is an opportunity to prevent the relocation of production to countries without carbon emissions trading,” said study co-author Vanessa Hünnemeyer. mkr
At the start of the year, Argentinian Celeste Saulo took over as head of the World Meteorological Organisation (WMO) in Geneva. “We stand at the intersection of inequality and climate change,” the 59-year-old meteorologist repeatedly emphasizes. As the former first Deputy Secretary-General, she is very familiar with the apparatus of the UN specialized agency and was elected WMO Secretary-General six months ago by a large majority.
Celeste Saulo is both an academic and an experienced manager. Born in the Argentinian capital in 1964, she studied meteorology at the Public University of Buenos Aires and obtained her PhD in atmospheric sciences in 1996. She continued her scientific career at the same university, where she twice headed the Department of Atmospheric and Marine Studies. After her election, she revealed that, as a mother of two children, she had to miss out on many trips abroad.
Instead, she was committed to modernizing Argentina’s meteorological service, which she headed from 2014 to 2023. In this role, she became Argentina’s representative to the WMO, quickly becoming a member of its Executive Board and eventually becoming its first Deputy Director-General. She is now the first woman to head the WMO – 150 years after the founding of the International Meteorological Organization, the organization’s predecessor. She is now the second person from the Global South to hold the leadership position in Geneva, long the domain of Europe.
Listening and talking to each other – that is the approach with which Saulo intends to break down internal blockades at the WMO. There was excessive competition between the departments, she explained. The exchange between the national meteorological services is one of the organization’s core tasks. However, she also wants to emphasize external cooperation, for example, with other UN organizations, NGOs, or private companies.
In times of climate change, the WMO is more important than ever – especially for the Global South: Last November, hundreds died in floods in the Horn of Africa and hundreds of thousands became climate refugees. A year ago, a long drought resulted in billions of losses for Argentinian farmers and accelerated the destruction of forests.
The most urgent task is the comprehensive installation of early warning systems to protect the population from extreme meteorological events, “because half of the countries don’t have any”. According to Saulo, such systems work best “when they are set up from the bottom up, with the involvement of those affected and in accordance with the respective cultural context.” Data collection also needs to be expanded in many countries, she says.
Given tight public budgets, Celeste Saulo believes that public-private partnerships are essential without giving large companies the upper hand. “Science and technology have come a long way,” she said when asked about the prospects of slowing down climate change. “When there are decisions that are sensitive to economies and economic interests, that is where the issue becomes very complex.”
Nevertheless, Saulo is a career optimist: “Everyone can do something,” she says almost imploringly, “we are not just thinking about ourselves, but also about the fact that future generations deserve a planet worth living on.” Gerhard Dilger, Buenos Aires
The small details sometimes decide whether big promises succeed. This is the case with the ambitious renewables expansion targets agreed upon at COP28 in Dubai. Their success depends, above all, on sufficient power grids. Nico Beckert discovered that the situation is so dire that the two responsible energy agencies, the IEA and IRENA, now warn that the COP plans could fail.
Meanwhile, a signal against the expansion of fossil fuels comes from Norway: A court has decided that Europe’s largest oil and gas producer must put the development of new drilling fields on hold. The reason: The plans failed to consider the potential impact on the climate.
In turn, internal EU plans suggest that the electricity sector will continue to emit fossil fuels until 2050, which must be disposed of using CCS, even though the Europeans have actually agreed on an electricity system that is supposed to first and foremost be “decarbonized.”
Things are going back and forth in climate and energy policy. We’ll keep our eyes open for you. The entire team hopes you enjoy our 100th Climate.Table and all future issues!
One of the biggest successes at COP28 – the decision to triple renewable energy capacity by 2030 – is being jeopardized by the slow expansion of power grids. Now, Francesco La Camera, Director-General of the International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA), warns in an interview with Table.Media: “Without addressing the urgent infrastructure needs, the world will not be able to accelerate the energy transition to limit the temperature increase to 1.5 degrees“. La Camera adds: “Globally, investments in the power grid have lagged behind those in renewable energies.” They must be “significantly increased.”
The International Energy Agency (IEA) backs this warning with concrete numbers: The goal of tripling renewables could be missed by around 20 percent worldwide. “Insufficient investment in the grid infrastructure” is preventing a faster expansion of renewables, according to the IEA. This, in turn, means that fossil fuels would have to remain on the grid for longer and emissions would be higher than necessary.
Kristian Ruby is Secretary General of Eurelectric, an association representing 3,500 European companies from the electricity generation, distribution, and supply sectors. He calls for an “ambitious investment and expansion plan for the grids” in Europe. Over the last five years, the EU has set “extremely ambitious targets for the expansion of renewables.” The “pace of expansion of the power grids” must now be “significantly increased,” Ruby told Table.Media. Otherwise, the power grid will become a “bottleneck for the energy transition.”
La Camera urges countries to “prepare for the large amounts of renewable energy that will be connected to the grid in the coming decades.” Grid investments should be made “three to five years ahead of investments in renewables.” The stalling grid expansion is a global problem. In the United States, outdated and poorly developed grids threaten the climate effects of the government’s multi-billion dollar Inflation Reduction Act. In China, several provinces and cities are no longer able to connect new solar projects to the grid due to insufficient capacity. According to the IEA, “grid bottlenecks must also be overcome” in Japan, South Korea and Australia to enable the faster expansion of renewables.
Stable and developed power grids form the basic building block for the energy transition and a decarbonized economy:
However, grid expansion is not keeping pace with the expansion of renewables. In the recent past, the reserves of the power grid have been used to connect renewables to the grid, Leonhard Birnbaum, President of the industry association Eurelectric and CEO of Eon, told Reuters. But “In more and more regions of Europe, we’ve just used up the reserves,” said Birnbaum.
If grid expansion is too slow, solar and wind power plants feed less electricity into the grid or cannot be connected to the grid at all:
The reasons for the slow expansion are manifold. La Camera insists on “accelerated approval procedures to ensure timely investment in modern electricity grids.” Ruby from Eurelectric considers this acceleration to be a “key point” for grid expansion.
A court in Oslo declared the license awarding for three oil fields in Norway invalid. The judges ruled that a legally required assessment of the climate damage caused by the planned combustion of the oil was missing. Experts believe that the first-instance ruling will not directly impact Norway’s oil production. However, it could lead to more publicity and a debate about the climate impact of Norwegian oil production.
Greenpeace and Natur og Ungdom filed a lawsuit against the government’s approval of a license (known as the “Plans for Development and Operation”) for the three oil fields Breidablikk, Tyrving and Yggdrasil on the Norwegian continental shelf in the North Sea.
The ruling by the Oslo District Court (tingrett) is a clear defeat for the state. The court has made it clear that an impact assessment of the emissions from the combustion of the extracted oil is required by law. However, the state failed to conduct such a study before granting licenses to develop and extract the fields.
The court stated that an assessment of the climate impact, including the resulting increase in global temperature, and a public consultation are important for a well-founded and correct decision basis. This would ensure that dissenting voices are heard and considered, and that the decision-making basis is verifiable and available to the public.
“The decisions are invalid because the lack of an impact assessment of potential adverse effects on life and health from the combustion emissions,” reads the ruling handed down on January 18.
Oil production at the Breidablikk oil field operated by Equinor began in October 2023. The production permit is issued for one year at a time and expires on December 31, 2024. The Tyrving oil field is expected to start production in 2025 and the Yggdrasil field in 2027. Both fields are operated by Aker BP. Yggdrasil will produce oil, gas and NGL (Natural Gas Liquid).
The ruling does not stop production in Breidablikk. But the state must now ensure that the decision, which the court has declared invalid, is “repaired” before the production license can be renewed, comments Sigrid Eskeland Schütz, a law professor at the University of Bergen, in an interview with the website Energi og Klima.
According to Schütz, this means that additional studies need to be conducted into the environmental impact of the combustion of extracted oil abroad. The greenhouse gas emissions from oil and gas combustion are much higher than the emissions generated during production.
” The reports must then be submitted for consultation, with the usual deadline, and then the matter must be finally reassessed,” says Schütz. She believes that the ministry can complete this process relatively quickly. The government will have to make new decisions for Tyrving and Yggdrasil before production can begin.
The Ministry of Energy is considering filing an appeal against the ruling. Experts expect the case to go all the way to the Supreme Court. However, Schütz believes there is no contradiction between carrying out new analyses, as required by the ruling, and appealing against it.
A 2020 Supreme Court ruling states that the environmental impact of a project must be assessed, including emissions. The ruling of the Oslo court refers to this Supreme Court decision.
Several political parties believe the ruling should have consequences for all oil projects approved by the state after 2020. That is a total of 22 projects.
“We can only understand that the same procedural error applies to all licenses for new oil and gas production granted after the Supreme Court’s ruling,” Lars Haltbrekken, energy policy spokesman for the Socialist Left Party in the Norwegian parliament, told Aftenposten.
Experts agree with the parties: The same mistakes apply to all license decisions made after 2020, lawyer Anders Flaatin Wilhelmsen from the law firm Selmer told the newspaper Dagens Næringsliv. He represented the case on the climate impact of oil production before the Supreme Court in 2020 on behalf of the Norwegian state.
Wilhelmsen sees the court ruling as a big win for the environmental movement. Nevertheless, he believes that the consequences for Norwegian oil policy will be limited. “The ruling has no significance for the Norwegian oil industry. It is only about the factual basis on which decisions about production, exploration and so on must be made,” he told Dagens Næringsliv.
Sigrid Schütz shares this view: “It’s still a political decision. So the result could be exactly the same as it is today, but probably more knowledge-based.” In the long term, it is conceivable that increasing knowledge about the effects on the climate could influence the political decisions on oil policy that are made in parliament, she emphasizes.
However, the signals from the government in recent months do not indicate a change of direction in Norway’s oil policy. The decision at COP28 in December to initiate a global phase-out of fossil fuels “changes nothing for Norway,” commented Energy Minister Terje Aasland on the agreement in Dubai.
On January 16, two days before the Oslo court ruling, Aasland’s ministry announced the designation of 62 new areas for the exploration of oil deposits on the Norwegian Continental Shelf. If discoveries relevant to production are made, a process for exploiting the discovery and finally granting a production license will be initiated.
In November, a group of experts called for a plan to phase out oil and gas production. The government quickly rejected the proposal. As usual, after such reports, a broad public consultation was initiated. The first phase of the consultation is still on
Ms. Stiem-Bhatia, why are healthy soils so crucial for the climate?
They are the largest carbon sinks and important water reservoirs, even more so than forests. This is very important for climate adaptation. After all, most arable land – in Germany and worldwide – is not irrigated artificially, meaning it has to make do with natural rainfall. Healthy soil helps plants survive periods of drought, absorbs water and thus help prevent flooding.
About climate action: How much CO2 is stored in our soils?
Calculations from 2017 concluded that a total of 680 billion tons of CO2 are stored in soils and 560 billion tons in forests worldwide. Model calculations assume that soils worldwide can hold another two to five billion tons of CO2 every year. By comparison, global carbon emissions are currently around 57 billion tons.
How reliable are such figures?
Soils are a very volatile carbon sink. That much needs to be said. As soon as cultivation methods change, but also due to forest fires or droughts, the carbon can quickly escape from the soil.
And what is the situation right now? Do soils release more CO2 or store it?
There are no measurements that are accurate and comprehensive enough to provide a global overview. Whether soil releases or stores CO2 depends on many factors. Take peatlands in Germany, for example: they are largely drained and therefore release CO2. But if peatlands are rewetted, they become a CO2 sink once again.
Healthy soils help prevent flooding. Did this help during this winter’s flooding disaster in Germany?
This varied greatly from region to region. In Germany, we have built on and sealed a lot of natural floodplains. Sealed soils can absorb practically no water. Despite this, 55 hectares of land continue to be converted for housing and transportation every day in Germany. We are far from the government’s target of reducing this to 30 hectares by 2030 and net zero by 2050. This land policy is a problem. In addition, our intensive agriculture, which uses heavy machinery, excessive mineral fertilizers and pesticides, degrades the soil. This reduces its capacity to absorb water and hinders the important build-up of humus.
How could politics reward agriculture that preserves the humus in the soil?
EU payments under the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) should be more closely linked to soil conservation or humus levels. In general, organic farming should receive much more financial support to make it worthwhile for farmers to make the switch and invest in soil conservation. Ultimately, they are also providing a service to society as a whole.
There are tradable carbon credits that reward the build-up of humus in the soil, similar to emissions trading. What do you think of this?
These soil carbon credits are not issued by public authorities, but by private institutions. The way they are currently designed, they are problematic for farmers, climate action, and human rights. They are often so cheap that they are not a significant income alternative for farmers and hardly an incentive for soil-conserving agriculture.
Where do you see the problems for climate action?
I see three problems: First, trading in cheap credits can easily lead to companies buying their way out of climate action. They purchase credits and mathematically offset their greenhouse gas emissions instead of actually reducing their emissions. There is also the question of how long the humus – and with it, the CO2 – remains in the soil. As soon as a farm reverts from sustainable farming to monocultures or high use of pesticides, the humus content in the soil can drop again very quickly. The CO2 stored in the soil is then released. And there is the risk of leakage: a farm cultivates a certain area sustainably and receives credits for this – but in return, it may rely even more heavily on intensive farming on the neighboring field. It would receive credits even if the overall humus level of its soil remained the same.
And what human rights problems do you see?
There have been cases in the Global South where people have been evicted from their land, which they have farmed for generations, to enable credit trading. Such credits can also reinforce gender inequalities. In many countries, landowners are primarily men, meaning women rarely benefit from compensation payments. It is important that carbon trading takes a human rights-based approach.
Land is scarce, and vast areas will be needed as sinks for the climate. How large are these areas?
Almost all national climate action commitments within the UNFCCC include measures for nature-based climate action, that is, for storing CO2 in soils and forests. If you combine them all, you get an area requirement of 1.2 billion hectares. That is about three times the size of the EU. To get closer to the net-zero target, we would have to change the type of land use on around 630 million hectares, for example, by reforesting arable land. But this is not empty land. People live there and the fields are their livelihood.
Is there even enough land to meet climate adaptation requirements, nature conservation and food security?
The various requirements are not necessarily mutually exclusive. Conservation agriculture, for example, stores more CO2 in the soil, strengthens resilience to climate change, benefits nature conservation and can increase income through crop diversification. Biodiversity, climate action and food security go hand in hand. Whether they are compatible ultimately depends very much on the type of agriculture practiced.
How realistic is it then to include soils to such an extent as a CO2 sink in national climate action targets?
Land may be scarce. But we need it for the climate. Even if we manage to phase out fossil fuels as quickly as possible, we still need nature to store CO2 in order to meet our climate targets. Healthier soils secure agricultural yields in the long term and also enable better climate change adaptation. So there is every reason to protect them better.
Larissa Stiem-Bhatia heads the program for nature-based solutions at the TMG Think Tank for Sustainability. She is the author of the recently published Soil Atlas 2024 by BUND, the Heinrich Böll Foundation and TMG.
The rapid expansion of renewables will continue over the next few years. According to new forecasts by the International Energy Agency (IEA), many countries will install more than twice as much renewable energy in the next six years as in the last six years. The growth forecasts for China are particularly impressive: the People’s Republic is expected to build the equivalent of every second solar and wind power plant installed worldwide. China will account for 56 percent of global expansion. “Over 2023-2028, China will deploy almost four times more renewable capacity than the European Union and five times more than the United States,” IEA analysts write.
Almost 3,700 gigawatts of new capacity will be added worldwide over the next six years – more than the total capacity of renewable energies currently installed worldwide. This means renewables will account for 42 percent of global electricity generation by 2028. By the beginning of 2025, they will replace coal as the largest power source. Wind power will already generate more electricity than nuclear power in 2025.
The expansion of renewables will be driven primarily by solar energy. Here, the IEA expects over 2,600 gigawatts of new capacity and over 800 gigawatts of onshore and offshore wind energy. By comparison, the IEA estimates that almost 510 gigawatts of new renewable energy capacity were built in 2023. However, the IEA also warns that growth could be even faster if hurdles are removed. And the wind power industry faces significant financial challenges in many countries. nib
The increased expansion of renewable energies in Germany is also reflected in the job market: In 2022, over 50,000 more people were employed in the sector than in the previous year, German Economy Minister Robert Habeck said on Table.Media’s German podcast Table.Today on Wednesday. That is an increase of 15 percent to 387,700 employees. “The efforts we are making in climate action are creating new added value,” said Habeck. According to the German Ministry for Economic Affairs and Climate Action, the majority of the new jobs were created in the solar energy and heat pump sectors. Biomass saw a smaller increase, while the number of jobs in wind power fell slightly despite rising expansion figures.
Habeck also remains optimistic about the future. Northvolt’s decision to invest in a new battery factory in Germany, for example, shows that the country can keep up with the competition – albeit with massive state subsidies. “I also believe that this subsidy race is not healthy,” said the Minister in the podcast. “On the other hand, you don’t want to stand by and watch and wave goodbye when the industry leaves.” Habeck also expects high levels of investment in the hydrogen sector.
A new study by the German Economic Institute (IW) on behalf of the Ruhr Regional Association shows that many new jobs will be created there too. The study will be published on Thursday and was made available to Table.Media in advance. According to the study, the development of the hydrogen economy will create around 8,700 new jobs in the Germany Ruhr region alone by 2023; this figure could rise to over 25,000 by 2045. In addition, the switch to hydrogen will secure thousands of existing jobs, for example in the steel industry. “If the ecological transformation succeeds, there is an opportunity to prevent the relocation of production to countries without carbon emissions trading,” said study co-author Vanessa Hünnemeyer. mkr
At the start of the year, Argentinian Celeste Saulo took over as head of the World Meteorological Organisation (WMO) in Geneva. “We stand at the intersection of inequality and climate change,” the 59-year-old meteorologist repeatedly emphasizes. As the former first Deputy Secretary-General, she is very familiar with the apparatus of the UN specialized agency and was elected WMO Secretary-General six months ago by a large majority.
Celeste Saulo is both an academic and an experienced manager. Born in the Argentinian capital in 1964, she studied meteorology at the Public University of Buenos Aires and obtained her PhD in atmospheric sciences in 1996. She continued her scientific career at the same university, where she twice headed the Department of Atmospheric and Marine Studies. After her election, she revealed that, as a mother of two children, she had to miss out on many trips abroad.
Instead, she was committed to modernizing Argentina’s meteorological service, which she headed from 2014 to 2023. In this role, she became Argentina’s representative to the WMO, quickly becoming a member of its Executive Board and eventually becoming its first Deputy Director-General. She is now the first woman to head the WMO – 150 years after the founding of the International Meteorological Organization, the organization’s predecessor. She is now the second person from the Global South to hold the leadership position in Geneva, long the domain of Europe.
Listening and talking to each other – that is the approach with which Saulo intends to break down internal blockades at the WMO. There was excessive competition between the departments, she explained. The exchange between the national meteorological services is one of the organization’s core tasks. However, she also wants to emphasize external cooperation, for example, with other UN organizations, NGOs, or private companies.
In times of climate change, the WMO is more important than ever – especially for the Global South: Last November, hundreds died in floods in the Horn of Africa and hundreds of thousands became climate refugees. A year ago, a long drought resulted in billions of losses for Argentinian farmers and accelerated the destruction of forests.
The most urgent task is the comprehensive installation of early warning systems to protect the population from extreme meteorological events, “because half of the countries don’t have any”. According to Saulo, such systems work best “when they are set up from the bottom up, with the involvement of those affected and in accordance with the respective cultural context.” Data collection also needs to be expanded in many countries, she says.
Given tight public budgets, Celeste Saulo believes that public-private partnerships are essential without giving large companies the upper hand. “Science and technology have come a long way,” she said when asked about the prospects of slowing down climate change. “When there are decisions that are sensitive to economies and economic interests, that is where the issue becomes very complex.”
Nevertheless, Saulo is a career optimist: “Everyone can do something,” she says almost imploringly, “we are not just thinking about ourselves, but also about the fact that future generations deserve a planet worth living on.” Gerhard Dilger, Buenos Aires
