At least the climate in the German government coalition seems to have been saved for the time being. After hours of negotiations, the Social Democratic Party (SPD), the Greens and the Free Democratic Party (FDP) have agreed on a compromise in the climate action area. The result: The country’s individual ministries have not been absolved of their responsibility for greater climate action. Offsetting between “climate sinners” and “climate strivers” among the ministries will be possible in the future. But since the climate targets are getting stricter from year to year, there will be little leeway.
Our interview with Francesco La Camera from the Berlin Energy Transition Week shows what tasks these and future governments face in the energy transition. The IRENA head sees the global community confronted with a monumental task, since many things have to happen in parallel: Every year, 1,000 gigawatts of new renewables capacity would be needed, as well as massive efforts to expand grid capacity and training for skilled workers. La Camera warns: Time is running out!
Cyclone “Freddy“, which hit many countries in Southeast Africa twice, also shows how pressing the problem is. Climate scientists agree that such extreme weather events will become more frequent and severe in the future, as Alexandra Endres found out. Vanuatu also sees its existence threatened by the climate crisis. On Wednesday, the UN General Assembly unanimously passed a resolution submitted by the island state. As a result, climate policy will be brought before the International Court of Justice. Bernhard Pötter has identified the potential benefits and risks for international climate action.
Best regards!
Central questions regarding the global climate crisis will be heard by the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in The Hague. On Wednesday, the UN General Assembly in New York unanimously adopted a resolution to this effect submitted by the island state of Vanuatu. This ends a years-long campaign by UN states and climate organizations – and the legal debate about the obligations and responsibilities of countries in climate change reaches a new global dimension.
Vanuatu’s resolution, submitted in spring 2023, was adopted without debate and with the support of well over 120 countries. It asks the ICJ for an advisory opinion, which is not legally binding but is expected to have a political impact. The project will shape the climate debate and the negotiations at the COPs in the future. The initiative could give international climate diplomacy a boost. However, observers warn that it also entails considerable risks for the climate process.
Specifically, the General Assembly is thus asking the judges in The Hague for an assessment of these issues:
The successful vote is considered a major diplomatic success for Vanuatu. The idea was conceived in 2019 at the University of the South Pacific in Vanuatu’s capital in a student project. The Vanuatu government first announced the project at the 2021 UN General Assembly and constantly gathered supporters. The text of the resolution was finally presented at COP27 in Sharm-El Sheikh.
“Together, you are making history,” UN Secretary-General António Guterres told government representatives before the adoption. The ICJ’s opinion “would assist the General Assembly, the UN and member states to take the bolder and stronger climate action that our world so desperately needs. It could also guide the actions and conduct of states in their relations with each other, as well as towards their own citizens.”
While the resolution may not be a miracle cure, Vanuatu’s Prime Minister Ishmael Kalsakau stressed that it would show that countries could come together and act. The resolution would not seek confrontation, but strengthen international cooperation.
The ICJ’s opinion will be available in about two years at the earliest. The procedure will require this long: The ICJ will probably give all countries and some NGOs a total of nine months to present their views and comment on the views of the others. This will be followed a few months later by hearings in The Hague and finally, possibly up to another year later, by the pronouncement of the “opinion”.
This court’s opinion does not obligate any state to act. Unlike in ICJ arbitration between two nations, the opinions are not legally binding. Nevertheless, advocates hope they will have an effect, says Sebastien Duyck of the Centre for International Environmental Law (CIEL) in Geneva, for example. “We expect that a court opinion will create a new solid ground for climate negotiations and help solidify existing principles.” One advantage, unlike with national climate lawsuits, is that civil society organizations are not suing a government, but “a majority of states themselves are acting to hear an authoritative opinion from the court,” Duyck said.
For Felix Ekardt, professor and Director of the Research Center Sustainability and Climate Policy in Leipzig, “an ICJ opinion alone would not be binding and states would try to ignore it. But as soon as national courts start to take up ICJ arguments, even if they don’t legally have to, the chances of successful climate lawsuits could increase significantly.”
Supporters hope the Court could, for example:
Even if such a statement by the ICJ is non-binding, it can still have an effect, says Andreas Buser, a constitutional and international law expert at the Free University of Berlin. “Such an opinion can have an effect in the political sphere. But it can also spread in legal academia and influence the debate on fundamental rights and human rights, for example before the relevant UN bodies.” Lastly, an ICJ ruling could also leave its mark on cases in which climate claims are heard by national courts.
But Vanuatu’s initiative is not without risk, as observers point out. For example, the ICJ judges, who were appointed by the governments of their countries, could respond much more conservatively to the request than hoped.
In any case, for Vanuatu, an island state with a population of about 300,000 on 13 main islands, the effects of the climate crisis are very real. Just in early March, the government had to declare a state of emergency after two severe cyclones had devastated parts of the islands in just one week.
With a clear warning and a call for an unprecedented effort to expand renewables, the International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA) has published its World Energy Transition Outlook 2023. The global energy transition is “off-track” and “a considerable scale-up of renewable energy and efficiency solutions” is required to stay on the 1.5- or 2-degree pathway. That is one conclusion from the report, which was presented at the Berlin Energy Transition Dialogue (BETD) on Tuesday. Table.Media spoke with IRENA Secretary-General Francesco La Camera about this.
Mr. La Camera, you do not seem very optimistic that we will meet the climate targets.
We can achieve them, if we do everything we have written down in this concept.
This is a monumental task.
That is obvious. And the further we get, the more difficult it becomes. If you live in Rome and want to see a Champions League game in Milan, that is 600 kilometers. If you drive 100 kilometers per hour in the car, you’ll be there in six hours. But if you only drive 60 for the first hour, you have to drive 110 for the other hours. If you continue to drive 60 for the second hour, you have to drive 150. And if you continue like this, you will realize by the fourth hour that you won’t physically make it.
To keep the climate targets in reach after all, IRENA is calling for a massive expansion of renewables capacities worldwide. Even the record annual sum of 1.3 trillion dollars invested in renewables in 2022 is not enough. Four times that amount would be needed: more than five trillion dollars annually. By 2030, 35 trillion dollars would have to be invested in efficiency, renewables, electrification, grid expansion and more flexible energy sources.
Your report basically says: Do everything right away and at the same time.
La Camera: Our data is clear. If you want to go from 3,000 GW to 10,000 GW by 2030, that is 1,000 GW per year. That means we have to more than triple the record 295 GW of 2022. (Table.Media reported) That was already the case last year, so now we need to expand three times as much and a bit more. And if we don’t, we’ll have to go 3.5 times as fast, and at some point, it will be physically impossible. That’s why the IPCC says 2030 is so important. Because after that it becomes such a big challenge physically.
Is it even physically still possible?
It is possible. But we need to rethink the global energy transition, especially between North and South. We need the physical and legal infrastructure, and the technical skills. This has worked well so far for the centralized fossil system, but not for clean energy.
The report calls for meeting the 1.5-degree climate targets:
Despite some progress – like rapidly falling prices that make renewables the cheapest energy source – development “fall far short of what is required to stay on the 1.5°C pathway“, IRENA writes. The Covid recovery packages were also a “missed opportunity” because only six percent of the world’s 15 trillion dollars in investment went into clean energy.
Where will the energy transition primarily take place?
La Camera: Especially in Africa and Southeast Asia. This requires three pillars: Physical and legal foundations, the workforce and institutional capacity. We need to understand which stakeholders play which roles. The energy transition, especially in Africa, cannot be achieved by single countries. It has to be done by multinational institutions that raise the money. So when we talk about reforming the global financial system and the World Bank, not only do they need to focus more on the energy transition – but we also need to decide how they should do it.
Is the development of power grids more important than building actual wind and solar farms?
These are different roles. Private investors build the plants. But the grid is a public matter, financial institutions have to organize that. It is a kind of common good. The legal aspect is also important. Because the risk for the investment increases if the legal conditions are unclear, or if the workforce or institutions are missing. If, on the other hand, there is help, if a legal system functions and there is state aid, it is easier. The fossil system has built up these structures over a hundred years.
And now we have to do it in seven years. What are the biggest obstacles there?
We need to understand what we need and act accordingly. This requires political will.
What makes you optimistic?
The understanding of the drama in which we live has become more mature.
What do you expect from the next COP?
This report is our message for the COP in Dubai. The most important thing is that this narrative is accepted there.
The key details from the “Modernisation package for climate action and planning acceleration“:
The Climate Protection Act is being amended: Unlike before, each ministry no longer has to meet exact emission caps every year. Now, “compliance with climate action targets is to be assessed based on a cross-sectoral and multi-year overall calculation“, it says. This means that reductions can be “offset” between ministries: If one ministry saves more emissions than required, others have to do less.
A corresponding amendment to the Climate Change Act is to be submitted to the German Bundestag by the summer. It envisages:
Softening the fixed targets for each ministry, a key instrument of the Climate Change Act, is being sharply criticized by many environmental groups. However, an “overall calculation” was already announced in the coalition agreement of the governing parties.
A bill to increase efficiency is expected to be ready by the summer. It was already promised last fall when Chancellor Olaf Scholz intervened to extend nuclear power plant lifetimes, but the coalition failed to pass it internally.
Priority will be given to quickly eliminate 144 “bottlenecks” on the autobahns. According to information from the coalition, this does not involve the construction of new stretches of road. At the same time, the planning of wind and solar parks is to be facilitated further. If requested, municipalities will also be able to plan wind farms in regions where this was not previously possible. Building solar and wind farms along autobahns is to be made easier. A solar obligation is to be introduced for new autobahn construction.
The HGV toll will be extended and increased to vehicles weighing 3.5 metric tons or more: A CO2 surcharge of 200 euros per ton of CO2 will be introduced starting in 2024. A large part of this revenue is to go toward the construction, expansion and maintenance of rail lines. There is talk of a total of around 20 billion euros over four years, which will cover around half of the needed 45 billion euros in rail investment.
Many individual measures are also included, among them:
The government’s highly controversial 2022 agreement that new heating systems must be fueled by at least 65 percent renewables by 2024 remains in effect. There will be additional subsidies for electric heat pumps, which are mainly considered for this purpose. The obligation to install a new heat pump will not apply if the building is connected to a district heating system – or if a system is credibly planned to run on green hydrogen. But that will probably only apply to small “islands,” according to the Ministry of Economics.
The regulation on fossil-free heating is to be implemented with a “technology-open approach” with “sufficient transitional periods”. The Building Energy Act will be “pragmatically designed, undue burden will be avoided, including for social compensation”, also for tenants.
The German government is continuing to focus on the introduction of emissions trading for transport and heating in 2027, assuming that the price of carbon credits in this area will rise to around 200 euros per metric ton by 2030. Together with increased truck tolls, this will presumably create strong demand for electric trucks. It would also make oil and gas heating much less attractive than heat pumps.
Compensation for land sealed by construction projects is newly regulated. Up to now, priority has been given to “real compensation” over monetary payment. This has so far resulted in isolated natural areas that are often not connected as biotopes. This will now be changed: Now compensation will also be provided financially to a greater extent. A law and a separate office at the Ministry of the Environment are to coordinate compensation to ensure that larger and more valuable natural areas can be secured.
At least 700 people have died, hundreds are still missing, and hundreds of thousands have lost their homes: That is the toll of Tropical Cyclone Freddy, which swept across Madagascar, Malawi, Mozambique and other countries in Southeast Africa until the middle of March.
Climate scientists believe that global warming will increase the likelihood and destructive power of particularly intense storms (such as Freddy). Scientists are calling for emission reductions, better adaptation and the rapid development of structures to provide financial assistance in the event of climate damage (loss and damage).
In Malawi, the extent of the damage is only slowly unfolding, says Claudia Plock. She heads the work of Welthungerhilfe (World Hunger Help) in Malawi, which was hit particularly hard by Freddy. At least 511 people lost their lives in the country alone.
“This cyclone has caused much greater destruction than previous cyclones,” Plock says – mainly because of the extremely heavy rains Freddy dumped on Malawi over a very short time. Within a few days, it rained as much as it usually does over many months, Plock says. Climate scientist Roxy Mathew Koll of the Indian Institute of Tropical Meteorology sees the large amounts of rain as a “clear signal of climate change“.
Now a large part of the harvest has been destroyed, says Plock. According to the UN, many people have also lost their livestock – an important basis of livelihood in Malawi. Plock reports washed away roads, cut power and telephone lines, and destroyed schools and health centers. Some regions reportedly remain inaccessible after the storm. More than 500,000 people were housed in emergency shelters in Malawi. “Most have lost all their belongings.”
Now they live in very confined, sometimes unhygienic conditions. The World Health Organization (WHO) fears an upsurge in cholera infections. Malawi is already struggling with the largest cholera outbreak in Africa. Last week, the WHO warned that climate change is “turbo-charging” the spread of the pathogen worldwide.
Markus Bremers, spokesman for the German medical aid organization action medeor, fears that the number of cholera deaths could also rise significantly because of Freddy: “After the cyclone, people have no clean drinking water and less to eat. This increases the susceptibility to diarrheal diseases and also their effects. The risk of a malnourished child dying from cholera is significantly increased.” action medeor is supporting clinics in the cyclone-affected region with surgical masks, IV solutions, antibiotics, gastrointestinal medicines and painkillers.
Freddy matches the projections of climate science. “Climate change likely played a role in Cyclone Freddy,” says climate researcher Friederike Otto of the Imperial College in London, “making the event more likely and
increasing the amount of rain that fell”.
Last year, the World Weather Attribution Group (WWA), headed by Otto, studied the impacts of Cyclone Batsirai and other storms in the same region now struck by Freddy. At that time, they were able to prove that rainfall was becoming more frequent and more intense due to climate change. “If we did a study on Cyclone Freddy the findings would be very similar,” Otto says.
In addition, she said, the countries hit by the cyclone are particularly vulnerable, and the consequences of the storms are therefore especially severe. This is “what turns an extreme weather event into a disaster,” Otto said. She urged wealthy countries to quickly reduce their greenhouse gas emissions and “help vulnerable countries to adapt to these types of events, which will only get worse with further warming.”
Genito Maure, a climate researcher at Eduardo Mondlane University in Mozambique, also predicts more severe flooding, heavy rain and wind. Urban planning and planning for rural areas must adapt to the changing conditions in the affected regions, says Maure.
In light of the destruction caused by Freddy, Saleemul Huq, Director of the International Centre for Climate Change and Development in Dhaka, Bangladesh, called for the transitional committee that is preparing the structure for the loss and damage fund to deliver concrete results by the next COP28. “We need funding to start very quickly,” Huq said at the Table.Live briefing “German Roadmap to COP28”.
The connection between elevated air temperature and heavy rainfall is well documented in climate science: A warmer atmosphere can absorb more water vapor, resulting in more frequent, extreme rainfall. If the ocean also warms up, cyclones form more easily because they draw their energy from the water.
According to the IPCC, heavy rainfall and associated flooding are already increasing in frequency in Madagascar and Southeast Africa. There is strong evidence that tropical cyclones are becoming more intense because of global warming, and that the proportion of particularly violent cyclones (categories 4 and 5) is also increasing. Freddy increased in strength several times, ultimately reaching the highest category 5.
Freddy was unusual in several respects: According to the World Meteorological Organization (WMO), the storm traveled the vast distance of 8,000 kilometers and released as much energy as an “average full North Atlantic hurricane season”. It also made landfall several times. A commission is now to investigate whether Freddy, with its 34-day duration, was also the longest storm ever recorded.
Synthetic fuels – better known as e-fuels – are likely to be in short supply for a very long time to come. According to an analysis by the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK), global supply in 2035 will not even be sufficient to meet the needs of Germany’s aviation, shipping and chemicals sector alone. In these areas, synthetic fuels are considered indispensable for decarbonization, as full electrification is not possible according to current scientific findings.
The authors write that about 60 new e-fuel projects have been announced worldwide for the period up to 2035, of which only about one percent have been secured with a final investment decision. All these global projects combined would represent only about ten percent of the volume required by the three German industries mentioned.
In Germany, there has been a lot of discussion about e-fuels in the past four weeks. Ever since German Transport Minister Volker Wissing (FDP) demanded Brussels to classify e-fuels as a way to meet climate targets for road transport, the question arises of where e-fuels will come from. The PIK analysis suggests that there will presumably be no available e-fuels capacity for cars – which, unlike ships or airplanes, can be electrified.
Wissing hopes that the Commission’s decision to allow cars with internal combustion engines to be registered after 2035 if they are fueled exclusively with e-fuels will result in a significant production ramp-up due to increased demand. But PIK researcher Falko Ueckerdt remains skeptical: “Even if the market ramp-up happens as quickly as with the growth champion solar photovoltaics,” the global supply would not be enough. luk
Only with a comprehensive, long-term strategy can Germany achieve its statutory net zero targets by 2045. The legal and political foundations may have already been laid: There is the Climate Action Plan 2050, the Climate Action Program 2030, the Climate Change Act, and the energy policy resolutions from 2022. But the Climate Action Plan and Climate Action Program are outdated and need to be revised.
The German government is now planning to amend the Climate Change Act in the near future, based on the decisions reached by the coalition committee on March 28, 2023, to adopt a comprehensive cross-sector climate action program and set targets for negative emissions for the years 2035, 2040 and 2045. However, the fact that Germany still does not have a long-term, overarching climate action plan for achieving net zero is a glaring omission. The coalition committee’s paper does not mention whether it will be drafted in the near future.
Such a long-term strategy should, above all, assess and incorporate the role and importance of carbon dioxide removal from the atmosphere (CDR). Natural and technological sinks such as bioenergy with CO2 capture and storage (BECCS) or direct CO2 capture from the air and subsequent storage (DACCS) are to “play a role,” according to the so-called modernization package for climate protection and planning acceleration – but it would be important to clarify which concrete strategic it will be.
Another gap is the ambiguous and incomplete mandate of scientific policy advice on long-term climate action. The Steering Committee of the Science Platform for Climate Protection identifies these gaps in its statement. In addition, it identifies six fields that should be addressed in a long-term strategy.
The question of how social justice and climate protection can be reconciled is already being asked today and will become even more important over time. Approval by society and a fair distribution of wealth are the foundations for successful climate policy. Climate policy should therefore be linked with social policy in a precautionary manner. This includes, for example, the timely implementation of targeted compensation payments for rising carbon prices. Furthermore, target group-specific instruments for emissions prevention should be discussed, which are aimed in particular at high-income households.
Acceptance and participation are key issues for the successful implementation of climate action measures. Information and communication offerings are fundamental, albeit limited, instruments. It is therefore necessary to give affected people greater opportunities to participate in transformation processes. Citizens’ councils, for example, can be an adequate model in a participation landscape. However, they should not be regarded as a panacea for involvement in climate policy.
Without international cooperation, achieving the Paris climate agreement is not possible. But the willingness to engage in multilateral cooperation seems to have declined. An industrial policy competition for a climate-neutral economy is emerging between the world’s leading economic regions. For example, the EU responded in early 2023 with the Net Zero Industry Act as part of the European response to the US Inflation Reduction Act (IRA). Here, knowledge gaps about national measures and the positive and negative effects in a global context urgently need to be addressed.
Interest in sustainable investment products is growing among institutional and private investors. However, an adequate classification system or reliable labels for investment products that indicate the transformation potential of an investment are still lacking. If this deficiency is remedied, the financial market can play an important role in climate action.
Climate legislation forms the backbone of a climate policy strategically geared towards net zero. Sustainable climate legislation must ensure that its own specifications, such as sector targets, are met. In this respect, transparency about compliance with targets is good, but sanctions for non-compliance are better. In addition, it must provide a basis for the planning, construction and operation of future infrastructures such as electricity, hydrogen and CO2 networks and be user-friendly in its enforcement for authorities, planning bodies and courts.
The targeted removal of CO2 from the atmosphere is essential to achieve climate targets, but must not weaken emission avoidance efforts. Further research is needed into the extent to which CO2 removal methods can be used and the resulting conflicts of use. Furthermore, long-term CO2 removal can only be guaranteed based on a stable governance and financing system.
Overall, climate policies for a long-term strategy should be evaluated according to how resilient they are and whether they contribute to effective governance. The pathway to net zero must be robust enough that neither the state nor other actors deviate significantly from the pathway when they come under stress.
Systemic challenges of democracies in multi-level systems must be adequately addressed in a long-term strategy. The advantages of democratic structures must be strengthened and the technical, economic and social creative potential of democratic structures harnessed for the transformation process. Effective governance is characterized by a credible commitment of policymakers to their climate action goals beyond legislative periods.
The text is an English translation of a revised and abridged version of a statement by the Steering Committee of the Science Platform on Climate Protection, which was submitted to the German government last Monday.
Shortly after the climate referendum in Berlin, Felix Nasser (30) looks positively at what has been achieved. He says he is “extremely” enthusiastic about what the initiative has achieved as a voluntary democracy movement, says the co-founder of “Klimaneustart Berlin”. Naturally, there is also a sobering feeling about the fact that the referendum on climate neutrality in Berlin by the year 2030 failed because of the quorum. However, he says, the initiative has managed to make the climate crisis an issue in the city over the past three months. More than 60 organizations are behind the project. They financed the placement of 500 large posters for the campaign. The total cost was 1.2 million euros. But Nasser also points to the less apparent successes: Many alliances have been forged, he says.
Nasser is the co-founder of “Klimaneustart Berlin,” an initiative that has successfully launched several campaigns on climate-crisis-related issues since 2019. The activist has dealt with the need extensively: During his master’s studies from 2017 to 2019 on systemic resilience with Johan Rockström at the Stockholm Resilience Center, he focused on so-called tipping points in Earth systems. At these points, formerly linear developments can turn into dynamic trajectories, becoming irreversible, difficult to predict, and almost impossible to control. The development paths refer to what Rockström calls planetary boundaries – the most well-known of which concerns climate change.
In 2018, Felix Nasser traveled to Katowice, Poland, for the international climate conference COP24. There, the global community – three years after the Paris resolutions – wanted to decide on concrete steps for the further implementation of the 1.5 degree target. This failed. He desired decisive political action, and switched from academia to activism. He moved to Berlin in 2019 because, to him, it is the big city that is potentially expected to have the greatest impact on change in the climate crisis and in Germany. Together with like-minded people, he founded the initiative Klimaneustart, which quickly gained popularity.
Starting in May 2019, the initiative developed a campaign – they wanted to have Berlin declare a “climate state of emergency” in order to kick-start the necessary transformation. They collected more than 40,000 signatures, and in the same year, the Senate followed suit and declared a climate emergency. After another signature campaign, a “Citizens’ Climate Council” convened from April to June 2022: 100 citizens selected by lottery draw up recommendations on how the 1.5 degree target can still be achieved. For this purpose, the participants worked on the complex topic.
Felix Nasser finds such self-efficacy motivating, including for his own actions as an activist: If many people work towards the same goal, such activism can become a movement, which is needed to generate political pressure as a civil society. For most people, being involved in finding answers to problems is gratifying – and this is all the more true when the answers are created together and one’s own commitment becomes both tangible and visible in the process, he says. But it is the politicians who have to take action.
Therefore, activists in Berlin increased the pressure on politicians. More than a thousand people have collected over 260,000 signatures; at farmer’s markets, in front of the Philharmonie and at other events. This finally culminated in the climate referendum on March 26. Had the referendum reached a quorum of the necessary votes, a change in the law would have become effective immediately and the Senate would have had to implement it. But Nasser says it became clear to him the week before the decision that it would be difficult to achieve a quorum. Too much media attention was focused on the hurdles of earlier efforts toward net zero, such as high costs.
And what is Felix Nasser going to do after the referendum? In any case, he says, the initiative showed how self-effective it can be to “want to get involved in democratic processes“. Everyone involved experienced the city in a completely different way. In the end, this gave him and others more strength than it took away. Now it’s time for strategic realignment, says Nasser. Torsten Sewing / Collaboration: Nico Beckert
At least the climate in the German government coalition seems to have been saved for the time being. After hours of negotiations, the Social Democratic Party (SPD), the Greens and the Free Democratic Party (FDP) have agreed on a compromise in the climate action area. The result: The country’s individual ministries have not been absolved of their responsibility for greater climate action. Offsetting between “climate sinners” and “climate strivers” among the ministries will be possible in the future. But since the climate targets are getting stricter from year to year, there will be little leeway.
Our interview with Francesco La Camera from the Berlin Energy Transition Week shows what tasks these and future governments face in the energy transition. The IRENA head sees the global community confronted with a monumental task, since many things have to happen in parallel: Every year, 1,000 gigawatts of new renewables capacity would be needed, as well as massive efforts to expand grid capacity and training for skilled workers. La Camera warns: Time is running out!
Cyclone “Freddy“, which hit many countries in Southeast Africa twice, also shows how pressing the problem is. Climate scientists agree that such extreme weather events will become more frequent and severe in the future, as Alexandra Endres found out. Vanuatu also sees its existence threatened by the climate crisis. On Wednesday, the UN General Assembly unanimously passed a resolution submitted by the island state. As a result, climate policy will be brought before the International Court of Justice. Bernhard Pötter has identified the potential benefits and risks for international climate action.
Best regards!
Central questions regarding the global climate crisis will be heard by the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in The Hague. On Wednesday, the UN General Assembly in New York unanimously adopted a resolution to this effect submitted by the island state of Vanuatu. This ends a years-long campaign by UN states and climate organizations – and the legal debate about the obligations and responsibilities of countries in climate change reaches a new global dimension.
Vanuatu’s resolution, submitted in spring 2023, was adopted without debate and with the support of well over 120 countries. It asks the ICJ for an advisory opinion, which is not legally binding but is expected to have a political impact. The project will shape the climate debate and the negotiations at the COPs in the future. The initiative could give international climate diplomacy a boost. However, observers warn that it also entails considerable risks for the climate process.
Specifically, the General Assembly is thus asking the judges in The Hague for an assessment of these issues:
The successful vote is considered a major diplomatic success for Vanuatu. The idea was conceived in 2019 at the University of the South Pacific in Vanuatu’s capital in a student project. The Vanuatu government first announced the project at the 2021 UN General Assembly and constantly gathered supporters. The text of the resolution was finally presented at COP27 in Sharm-El Sheikh.
“Together, you are making history,” UN Secretary-General António Guterres told government representatives before the adoption. The ICJ’s opinion “would assist the General Assembly, the UN and member states to take the bolder and stronger climate action that our world so desperately needs. It could also guide the actions and conduct of states in their relations with each other, as well as towards their own citizens.”
While the resolution may not be a miracle cure, Vanuatu’s Prime Minister Ishmael Kalsakau stressed that it would show that countries could come together and act. The resolution would not seek confrontation, but strengthen international cooperation.
The ICJ’s opinion will be available in about two years at the earliest. The procedure will require this long: The ICJ will probably give all countries and some NGOs a total of nine months to present their views and comment on the views of the others. This will be followed a few months later by hearings in The Hague and finally, possibly up to another year later, by the pronouncement of the “opinion”.
This court’s opinion does not obligate any state to act. Unlike in ICJ arbitration between two nations, the opinions are not legally binding. Nevertheless, advocates hope they will have an effect, says Sebastien Duyck of the Centre for International Environmental Law (CIEL) in Geneva, for example. “We expect that a court opinion will create a new solid ground for climate negotiations and help solidify existing principles.” One advantage, unlike with national climate lawsuits, is that civil society organizations are not suing a government, but “a majority of states themselves are acting to hear an authoritative opinion from the court,” Duyck said.
For Felix Ekardt, professor and Director of the Research Center Sustainability and Climate Policy in Leipzig, “an ICJ opinion alone would not be binding and states would try to ignore it. But as soon as national courts start to take up ICJ arguments, even if they don’t legally have to, the chances of successful climate lawsuits could increase significantly.”
Supporters hope the Court could, for example:
Even if such a statement by the ICJ is non-binding, it can still have an effect, says Andreas Buser, a constitutional and international law expert at the Free University of Berlin. “Such an opinion can have an effect in the political sphere. But it can also spread in legal academia and influence the debate on fundamental rights and human rights, for example before the relevant UN bodies.” Lastly, an ICJ ruling could also leave its mark on cases in which climate claims are heard by national courts.
But Vanuatu’s initiative is not without risk, as observers point out. For example, the ICJ judges, who were appointed by the governments of their countries, could respond much more conservatively to the request than hoped.
In any case, for Vanuatu, an island state with a population of about 300,000 on 13 main islands, the effects of the climate crisis are very real. Just in early March, the government had to declare a state of emergency after two severe cyclones had devastated parts of the islands in just one week.
With a clear warning and a call for an unprecedented effort to expand renewables, the International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA) has published its World Energy Transition Outlook 2023. The global energy transition is “off-track” and “a considerable scale-up of renewable energy and efficiency solutions” is required to stay on the 1.5- or 2-degree pathway. That is one conclusion from the report, which was presented at the Berlin Energy Transition Dialogue (BETD) on Tuesday. Table.Media spoke with IRENA Secretary-General Francesco La Camera about this.
Mr. La Camera, you do not seem very optimistic that we will meet the climate targets.
We can achieve them, if we do everything we have written down in this concept.
This is a monumental task.
That is obvious. And the further we get, the more difficult it becomes. If you live in Rome and want to see a Champions League game in Milan, that is 600 kilometers. If you drive 100 kilometers per hour in the car, you’ll be there in six hours. But if you only drive 60 for the first hour, you have to drive 110 for the other hours. If you continue to drive 60 for the second hour, you have to drive 150. And if you continue like this, you will realize by the fourth hour that you won’t physically make it.
To keep the climate targets in reach after all, IRENA is calling for a massive expansion of renewables capacities worldwide. Even the record annual sum of 1.3 trillion dollars invested in renewables in 2022 is not enough. Four times that amount would be needed: more than five trillion dollars annually. By 2030, 35 trillion dollars would have to be invested in efficiency, renewables, electrification, grid expansion and more flexible energy sources.
Your report basically says: Do everything right away and at the same time.
La Camera: Our data is clear. If you want to go from 3,000 GW to 10,000 GW by 2030, that is 1,000 GW per year. That means we have to more than triple the record 295 GW of 2022. (Table.Media reported) That was already the case last year, so now we need to expand three times as much and a bit more. And if we don’t, we’ll have to go 3.5 times as fast, and at some point, it will be physically impossible. That’s why the IPCC says 2030 is so important. Because after that it becomes such a big challenge physically.
Is it even physically still possible?
It is possible. But we need to rethink the global energy transition, especially between North and South. We need the physical and legal infrastructure, and the technical skills. This has worked well so far for the centralized fossil system, but not for clean energy.
The report calls for meeting the 1.5-degree climate targets:
Despite some progress – like rapidly falling prices that make renewables the cheapest energy source – development “fall far short of what is required to stay on the 1.5°C pathway“, IRENA writes. The Covid recovery packages were also a “missed opportunity” because only six percent of the world’s 15 trillion dollars in investment went into clean energy.
Where will the energy transition primarily take place?
La Camera: Especially in Africa and Southeast Asia. This requires three pillars: Physical and legal foundations, the workforce and institutional capacity. We need to understand which stakeholders play which roles. The energy transition, especially in Africa, cannot be achieved by single countries. It has to be done by multinational institutions that raise the money. So when we talk about reforming the global financial system and the World Bank, not only do they need to focus more on the energy transition – but we also need to decide how they should do it.
Is the development of power grids more important than building actual wind and solar farms?
These are different roles. Private investors build the plants. But the grid is a public matter, financial institutions have to organize that. It is a kind of common good. The legal aspect is also important. Because the risk for the investment increases if the legal conditions are unclear, or if the workforce or institutions are missing. If, on the other hand, there is help, if a legal system functions and there is state aid, it is easier. The fossil system has built up these structures over a hundred years.
And now we have to do it in seven years. What are the biggest obstacles there?
We need to understand what we need and act accordingly. This requires political will.
What makes you optimistic?
The understanding of the drama in which we live has become more mature.
What do you expect from the next COP?
This report is our message for the COP in Dubai. The most important thing is that this narrative is accepted there.
The key details from the “Modernisation package for climate action and planning acceleration“:
The Climate Protection Act is being amended: Unlike before, each ministry no longer has to meet exact emission caps every year. Now, “compliance with climate action targets is to be assessed based on a cross-sectoral and multi-year overall calculation“, it says. This means that reductions can be “offset” between ministries: If one ministry saves more emissions than required, others have to do less.
A corresponding amendment to the Climate Change Act is to be submitted to the German Bundestag by the summer. It envisages:
Softening the fixed targets for each ministry, a key instrument of the Climate Change Act, is being sharply criticized by many environmental groups. However, an “overall calculation” was already announced in the coalition agreement of the governing parties.
A bill to increase efficiency is expected to be ready by the summer. It was already promised last fall when Chancellor Olaf Scholz intervened to extend nuclear power plant lifetimes, but the coalition failed to pass it internally.
Priority will be given to quickly eliminate 144 “bottlenecks” on the autobahns. According to information from the coalition, this does not involve the construction of new stretches of road. At the same time, the planning of wind and solar parks is to be facilitated further. If requested, municipalities will also be able to plan wind farms in regions where this was not previously possible. Building solar and wind farms along autobahns is to be made easier. A solar obligation is to be introduced for new autobahn construction.
The HGV toll will be extended and increased to vehicles weighing 3.5 metric tons or more: A CO2 surcharge of 200 euros per ton of CO2 will be introduced starting in 2024. A large part of this revenue is to go toward the construction, expansion and maintenance of rail lines. There is talk of a total of around 20 billion euros over four years, which will cover around half of the needed 45 billion euros in rail investment.
Many individual measures are also included, among them:
The government’s highly controversial 2022 agreement that new heating systems must be fueled by at least 65 percent renewables by 2024 remains in effect. There will be additional subsidies for electric heat pumps, which are mainly considered for this purpose. The obligation to install a new heat pump will not apply if the building is connected to a district heating system – or if a system is credibly planned to run on green hydrogen. But that will probably only apply to small “islands,” according to the Ministry of Economics.
The regulation on fossil-free heating is to be implemented with a “technology-open approach” with “sufficient transitional periods”. The Building Energy Act will be “pragmatically designed, undue burden will be avoided, including for social compensation”, also for tenants.
The German government is continuing to focus on the introduction of emissions trading for transport and heating in 2027, assuming that the price of carbon credits in this area will rise to around 200 euros per metric ton by 2030. Together with increased truck tolls, this will presumably create strong demand for electric trucks. It would also make oil and gas heating much less attractive than heat pumps.
Compensation for land sealed by construction projects is newly regulated. Up to now, priority has been given to “real compensation” over monetary payment. This has so far resulted in isolated natural areas that are often not connected as biotopes. This will now be changed: Now compensation will also be provided financially to a greater extent. A law and a separate office at the Ministry of the Environment are to coordinate compensation to ensure that larger and more valuable natural areas can be secured.
At least 700 people have died, hundreds are still missing, and hundreds of thousands have lost their homes: That is the toll of Tropical Cyclone Freddy, which swept across Madagascar, Malawi, Mozambique and other countries in Southeast Africa until the middle of March.
Climate scientists believe that global warming will increase the likelihood and destructive power of particularly intense storms (such as Freddy). Scientists are calling for emission reductions, better adaptation and the rapid development of structures to provide financial assistance in the event of climate damage (loss and damage).
In Malawi, the extent of the damage is only slowly unfolding, says Claudia Plock. She heads the work of Welthungerhilfe (World Hunger Help) in Malawi, which was hit particularly hard by Freddy. At least 511 people lost their lives in the country alone.
“This cyclone has caused much greater destruction than previous cyclones,” Plock says – mainly because of the extremely heavy rains Freddy dumped on Malawi over a very short time. Within a few days, it rained as much as it usually does over many months, Plock says. Climate scientist Roxy Mathew Koll of the Indian Institute of Tropical Meteorology sees the large amounts of rain as a “clear signal of climate change“.
Now a large part of the harvest has been destroyed, says Plock. According to the UN, many people have also lost their livestock – an important basis of livelihood in Malawi. Plock reports washed away roads, cut power and telephone lines, and destroyed schools and health centers. Some regions reportedly remain inaccessible after the storm. More than 500,000 people were housed in emergency shelters in Malawi. “Most have lost all their belongings.”
Now they live in very confined, sometimes unhygienic conditions. The World Health Organization (WHO) fears an upsurge in cholera infections. Malawi is already struggling with the largest cholera outbreak in Africa. Last week, the WHO warned that climate change is “turbo-charging” the spread of the pathogen worldwide.
Markus Bremers, spokesman for the German medical aid organization action medeor, fears that the number of cholera deaths could also rise significantly because of Freddy: “After the cyclone, people have no clean drinking water and less to eat. This increases the susceptibility to diarrheal diseases and also their effects. The risk of a malnourished child dying from cholera is significantly increased.” action medeor is supporting clinics in the cyclone-affected region with surgical masks, IV solutions, antibiotics, gastrointestinal medicines and painkillers.
Freddy matches the projections of climate science. “Climate change likely played a role in Cyclone Freddy,” says climate researcher Friederike Otto of the Imperial College in London, “making the event more likely and
increasing the amount of rain that fell”.
Last year, the World Weather Attribution Group (WWA), headed by Otto, studied the impacts of Cyclone Batsirai and other storms in the same region now struck by Freddy. At that time, they were able to prove that rainfall was becoming more frequent and more intense due to climate change. “If we did a study on Cyclone Freddy the findings would be very similar,” Otto says.
In addition, she said, the countries hit by the cyclone are particularly vulnerable, and the consequences of the storms are therefore especially severe. This is “what turns an extreme weather event into a disaster,” Otto said. She urged wealthy countries to quickly reduce their greenhouse gas emissions and “help vulnerable countries to adapt to these types of events, which will only get worse with further warming.”
Genito Maure, a climate researcher at Eduardo Mondlane University in Mozambique, also predicts more severe flooding, heavy rain and wind. Urban planning and planning for rural areas must adapt to the changing conditions in the affected regions, says Maure.
In light of the destruction caused by Freddy, Saleemul Huq, Director of the International Centre for Climate Change and Development in Dhaka, Bangladesh, called for the transitional committee that is preparing the structure for the loss and damage fund to deliver concrete results by the next COP28. “We need funding to start very quickly,” Huq said at the Table.Live briefing “German Roadmap to COP28”.
The connection between elevated air temperature and heavy rainfall is well documented in climate science: A warmer atmosphere can absorb more water vapor, resulting in more frequent, extreme rainfall. If the ocean also warms up, cyclones form more easily because they draw their energy from the water.
According to the IPCC, heavy rainfall and associated flooding are already increasing in frequency in Madagascar and Southeast Africa. There is strong evidence that tropical cyclones are becoming more intense because of global warming, and that the proportion of particularly violent cyclones (categories 4 and 5) is also increasing. Freddy increased in strength several times, ultimately reaching the highest category 5.
Freddy was unusual in several respects: According to the World Meteorological Organization (WMO), the storm traveled the vast distance of 8,000 kilometers and released as much energy as an “average full North Atlantic hurricane season”. It also made landfall several times. A commission is now to investigate whether Freddy, with its 34-day duration, was also the longest storm ever recorded.
Synthetic fuels – better known as e-fuels – are likely to be in short supply for a very long time to come. According to an analysis by the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK), global supply in 2035 will not even be sufficient to meet the needs of Germany’s aviation, shipping and chemicals sector alone. In these areas, synthetic fuels are considered indispensable for decarbonization, as full electrification is not possible according to current scientific findings.
The authors write that about 60 new e-fuel projects have been announced worldwide for the period up to 2035, of which only about one percent have been secured with a final investment decision. All these global projects combined would represent only about ten percent of the volume required by the three German industries mentioned.
In Germany, there has been a lot of discussion about e-fuels in the past four weeks. Ever since German Transport Minister Volker Wissing (FDP) demanded Brussels to classify e-fuels as a way to meet climate targets for road transport, the question arises of where e-fuels will come from. The PIK analysis suggests that there will presumably be no available e-fuels capacity for cars – which, unlike ships or airplanes, can be electrified.
Wissing hopes that the Commission’s decision to allow cars with internal combustion engines to be registered after 2035 if they are fueled exclusively with e-fuels will result in a significant production ramp-up due to increased demand. But PIK researcher Falko Ueckerdt remains skeptical: “Even if the market ramp-up happens as quickly as with the growth champion solar photovoltaics,” the global supply would not be enough. luk
Only with a comprehensive, long-term strategy can Germany achieve its statutory net zero targets by 2045. The legal and political foundations may have already been laid: There is the Climate Action Plan 2050, the Climate Action Program 2030, the Climate Change Act, and the energy policy resolutions from 2022. But the Climate Action Plan and Climate Action Program are outdated and need to be revised.
The German government is now planning to amend the Climate Change Act in the near future, based on the decisions reached by the coalition committee on March 28, 2023, to adopt a comprehensive cross-sector climate action program and set targets for negative emissions for the years 2035, 2040 and 2045. However, the fact that Germany still does not have a long-term, overarching climate action plan for achieving net zero is a glaring omission. The coalition committee’s paper does not mention whether it will be drafted in the near future.
Such a long-term strategy should, above all, assess and incorporate the role and importance of carbon dioxide removal from the atmosphere (CDR). Natural and technological sinks such as bioenergy with CO2 capture and storage (BECCS) or direct CO2 capture from the air and subsequent storage (DACCS) are to “play a role,” according to the so-called modernization package for climate protection and planning acceleration – but it would be important to clarify which concrete strategic it will be.
Another gap is the ambiguous and incomplete mandate of scientific policy advice on long-term climate action. The Steering Committee of the Science Platform for Climate Protection identifies these gaps in its statement. In addition, it identifies six fields that should be addressed in a long-term strategy.
The question of how social justice and climate protection can be reconciled is already being asked today and will become even more important over time. Approval by society and a fair distribution of wealth are the foundations for successful climate policy. Climate policy should therefore be linked with social policy in a precautionary manner. This includes, for example, the timely implementation of targeted compensation payments for rising carbon prices. Furthermore, target group-specific instruments for emissions prevention should be discussed, which are aimed in particular at high-income households.
Acceptance and participation are key issues for the successful implementation of climate action measures. Information and communication offerings are fundamental, albeit limited, instruments. It is therefore necessary to give affected people greater opportunities to participate in transformation processes. Citizens’ councils, for example, can be an adequate model in a participation landscape. However, they should not be regarded as a panacea for involvement in climate policy.
Without international cooperation, achieving the Paris climate agreement is not possible. But the willingness to engage in multilateral cooperation seems to have declined. An industrial policy competition for a climate-neutral economy is emerging between the world’s leading economic regions. For example, the EU responded in early 2023 with the Net Zero Industry Act as part of the European response to the US Inflation Reduction Act (IRA). Here, knowledge gaps about national measures and the positive and negative effects in a global context urgently need to be addressed.
Interest in sustainable investment products is growing among institutional and private investors. However, an adequate classification system or reliable labels for investment products that indicate the transformation potential of an investment are still lacking. If this deficiency is remedied, the financial market can play an important role in climate action.
Climate legislation forms the backbone of a climate policy strategically geared towards net zero. Sustainable climate legislation must ensure that its own specifications, such as sector targets, are met. In this respect, transparency about compliance with targets is good, but sanctions for non-compliance are better. In addition, it must provide a basis for the planning, construction and operation of future infrastructures such as electricity, hydrogen and CO2 networks and be user-friendly in its enforcement for authorities, planning bodies and courts.
The targeted removal of CO2 from the atmosphere is essential to achieve climate targets, but must not weaken emission avoidance efforts. Further research is needed into the extent to which CO2 removal methods can be used and the resulting conflicts of use. Furthermore, long-term CO2 removal can only be guaranteed based on a stable governance and financing system.
Overall, climate policies for a long-term strategy should be evaluated according to how resilient they are and whether they contribute to effective governance. The pathway to net zero must be robust enough that neither the state nor other actors deviate significantly from the pathway when they come under stress.
Systemic challenges of democracies in multi-level systems must be adequately addressed in a long-term strategy. The advantages of democratic structures must be strengthened and the technical, economic and social creative potential of democratic structures harnessed for the transformation process. Effective governance is characterized by a credible commitment of policymakers to their climate action goals beyond legislative periods.
The text is an English translation of a revised and abridged version of a statement by the Steering Committee of the Science Platform on Climate Protection, which was submitted to the German government last Monday.
Shortly after the climate referendum in Berlin, Felix Nasser (30) looks positively at what has been achieved. He says he is “extremely” enthusiastic about what the initiative has achieved as a voluntary democracy movement, says the co-founder of “Klimaneustart Berlin”. Naturally, there is also a sobering feeling about the fact that the referendum on climate neutrality in Berlin by the year 2030 failed because of the quorum. However, he says, the initiative has managed to make the climate crisis an issue in the city over the past three months. More than 60 organizations are behind the project. They financed the placement of 500 large posters for the campaign. The total cost was 1.2 million euros. But Nasser also points to the less apparent successes: Many alliances have been forged, he says.
Nasser is the co-founder of “Klimaneustart Berlin,” an initiative that has successfully launched several campaigns on climate-crisis-related issues since 2019. The activist has dealt with the need extensively: During his master’s studies from 2017 to 2019 on systemic resilience with Johan Rockström at the Stockholm Resilience Center, he focused on so-called tipping points in Earth systems. At these points, formerly linear developments can turn into dynamic trajectories, becoming irreversible, difficult to predict, and almost impossible to control. The development paths refer to what Rockström calls planetary boundaries – the most well-known of which concerns climate change.
In 2018, Felix Nasser traveled to Katowice, Poland, for the international climate conference COP24. There, the global community – three years after the Paris resolutions – wanted to decide on concrete steps for the further implementation of the 1.5 degree target. This failed. He desired decisive political action, and switched from academia to activism. He moved to Berlin in 2019 because, to him, it is the big city that is potentially expected to have the greatest impact on change in the climate crisis and in Germany. Together with like-minded people, he founded the initiative Klimaneustart, which quickly gained popularity.
Starting in May 2019, the initiative developed a campaign – they wanted to have Berlin declare a “climate state of emergency” in order to kick-start the necessary transformation. They collected more than 40,000 signatures, and in the same year, the Senate followed suit and declared a climate emergency. After another signature campaign, a “Citizens’ Climate Council” convened from April to June 2022: 100 citizens selected by lottery draw up recommendations on how the 1.5 degree target can still be achieved. For this purpose, the participants worked on the complex topic.
Felix Nasser finds such self-efficacy motivating, including for his own actions as an activist: If many people work towards the same goal, such activism can become a movement, which is needed to generate political pressure as a civil society. For most people, being involved in finding answers to problems is gratifying – and this is all the more true when the answers are created together and one’s own commitment becomes both tangible and visible in the process, he says. But it is the politicians who have to take action.
Therefore, activists in Berlin increased the pressure on politicians. More than a thousand people have collected over 260,000 signatures; at farmer’s markets, in front of the Philharmonie and at other events. This finally culminated in the climate referendum on March 26. Had the referendum reached a quorum of the necessary votes, a change in the law would have become effective immediately and the Senate would have had to implement it. But Nasser says it became clear to him the week before the decision that it would be difficult to achieve a quorum. Too much media attention was focused on the hurdles of earlier efforts toward net zero, such as high costs.
And what is Felix Nasser going to do after the referendum? In any case, he says, the initiative showed how self-effective it can be to “want to get involved in democratic processes“. Everyone involved experienced the city in a completely different way. In the end, this gave him and others more strength than it took away. Now it’s time for strategic realignment, says Nasser. Torsten Sewing / Collaboration: Nico Beckert
