We thought that we were done fact-checking climate issues. But no: As soon as he took office, the new US Secretary of Energy Chris Wright heavily criticized the German energy transition – with many questionable arguments. Malte Kreutzfeldt took a closer look at his claims. And lo and behold: Hardly any of the figures Wright cited stand up to a reality check. Donald Trump doesn’t care about that, but we do.
Similarly far removed from reality is Japan’s new NDC, which Keisuke Katori has dissected for us. And climate and energy issues were also part of the German election campaigns, with plenty of fake news, distortions and plain ignorance. And Lisa Kuner has examined how the climate movement has positioned itself in recent months: more politically than ever before.
On Sunday, it will be decided who will shape future climate and energy policy in the German parliament. We are just as eager as you are to see a new government with new ways of solving old problems. And hopefully, the debate will return to facts and science once the election ends. In any case, we will keep a close eye on all that will be decided. And what is not.
In his 30-minute inaugural speech as the new US Secretary of Energy on February 5, Chris Wright dedicated around four minutes to the German energy transition. While it is often cited as a shining example elsewhere, Wright presented the energy transition as a warning for the US. However, the facts and figures he cited are largely false or misleading. Climate.Table offers a correction and assessment.
One of Wright’s central claims is that the electricity prices in Germany have tripled in the last 15 years; the context suggests that he was referring to the price for private households. This claim is incorrect. In fact, the price of electricity has risen by around 50 percent during this period (source); although this is an increase, it is not dramatically higher than the general inflation rate, which was 34 percent during this period.
Even if the statement refers to the electricity exchange price, it is still inaccurate. In 2024, it was almost twice as high as in 2009 (source). And this increase was not caused by the energy transition, but primarily by gas prices, which have risen sharply due to the discontinuation of Russian pipeline imports. This is evident firstly from the fact that the electricity exchange price fell to a low in 2020 and only increased in the wake of the Russian attack on Ukraine. Secondly, a comparable increase was also observed in countries such as France and Poland, which have different energy policies from Germany.
Another of Wright’s central claims is that Germany’s industrial output has fallen by 20 percent over 15 years, parallel to the energy transition. However, the opposite is true: According to the Federal Statistical Office, industrial production in Germany did not decline between 2009 and 2024, but increased significantly by 10.6 percent. The figures compared are adjusted for inflation and calendar effects (source). The impression Wright conveyed that the German economy is no longer competitive internationally does not reflect reality either: At 239 billion euros in 2024, the German export surplus was 73 percent higher in nominal terms than 15 years previously. Trade with the US alone generated a surplus of 70 billion euros (source).
Wright’s unspecified statement that the energy transition has made the electricity supply unreliable is also inaccurate. In fact, it was more reliable in 2023 than in 2009, with an average outage time of less than 13 minutes per year (source) – and more reliable by a factor of 10 to 30 than in the US, which, depending on the calculation method, had outage times of between 118 and 366 minutes per year in 2023 (source).
Wright also suggests that the energy transition is of little benefit to the climate, stating that the share of fossil fuels in Germany’s primary energy consumption has only fallen from 80 percent to 74 percent since 2010. Although the decline was even slightly lower (source), the composition of primary energy consumption is not a suitable indicator for determining the carbon footprint. Because fossil-fuel power plants release more than half of the primary energy used as waste heat, primary energy demand drops significantly when switching to renewable energies. As a result, the proportion of remaining fossil fuels remains comparatively high, even if their use decreases significantly in absolute terms.
To assess the actual effect of the energy transition on the climate, absolute figures are more meaningful. These show that energy production from fossil fuels in Germany has declined by 27 percent since 2010. This has cut German greenhouse gas emissions by almost 30 percent in the same period (source 1/source 2). By comparison, the United States only managed to reduce emissions by 14 percent in the same period.
Correct – but not relevant to the argument – is Wright’s statement that electricity output in Germany is 20 percent lower than 20 years ago. However, this is not a sign of lower efficiency, but a consequence of lower demand. Around half of the decrease can be attributed to lower domestic electricity consumption (partly due to greater efficiency and partly due to lower production in energy-intensive industries). The other half of the decrease is because Germany exported less electricity to neighboring countries.
The statement that installed capacity in Germany has risen from 100 to 240 gigawatts in the last 15 years is true, at least based on the trend; it has actually risen from 144 to 263 gigawatts. However, this increase is not a problem, but a logical consequence of the fact that wind and solar power plants have significantly fewer full-load hours than fossil fuel power plants in the past and therefore require a higher installed capacity overall.
With the remark that winter temperatures in Northern Europe are cold and cloudy, Wright suggests that using solar power in Germany makes little sense. Disregarding that Germany is not geographically part of Northern Europe and that solar cells work more efficiently at low temperatures, it is quite true that solar systems produce significantly less energy in the winter than in the summer due to the shorter days and the lower position of the sun. However, this is not a problem because solar systems complement wind turbines, which produce significantly more electricity in winter than in summer (source). In total, solar cells generated just under 13 percent of Germany’s electricity last year.
Wright put the cost of the energy transition to date at 500 billion dollars. In absolute terms, this figure is correct; there are even higher estimates depending on what is included. However, this figure is not very indicative. For one thing, the sum accrued over 20 years, which means that it is actually around 25 billion dollars per year. Secondly, the number would have to be compared with the investments in the energy system and additional expenditure on fossil fuel imports that would have been necessary without the energy transition. Furthermore, it would have to be taken into account that renewable electricity generates costs due to the guaranteed remuneration, but in return, lowers the electricity exchange prices due to its low marginal costs.
Wearing a dress with the words “Donald & Elon & Alice & Friedrich?,” climate activist Luisa Neubauer caused a stir at the opening of the Berlinale last Thursday. She protested against the CDU’s current policies. A video of her Berlinale appearance, in which she calls for defending democracy “with all our might,” was viewed more than 200,000 times on TikTok. The following day, there was a climate strike across Germany – but unlike a few years ago, only a few tens of thousands took to the streets instead of millions.
Fridays for Future (FFF) has adopted a clearer political stance in the run-up to the federal elections than in previous years – “Climate justice means anti-fascism,” says a blog article in which the activists explain why they believe climate action and the fight against the right go hand in hand. Local FFF groups have also rallied in many cities for anti-right-wing demonstrations in recent weeks – and here, too, criticism is often directed not only at the far-right AfD, but also at the Christian Democratic Union (CDU). “The way the CDU is currently positioning itself is a threat to climate action,” says Pauline Brünger, FFF spokesperson. However, she says this does not mean there can be no convincing conservative climate policy. Last year, climate activist and capitalism critic Lisa Poettinger expressed herself even more clearly – she explicitly banned CSU politicians from a demonstration by announcing on X that she was “not a fan of right-wingers of any stripe.”
This clearer political positioning beyond climate issues is becoming more frequent: Franziska Martini from the Institute for Democracy and Civil Society in Jena says that the climate movement is even more explicitly committed to democracy and human rights and against the rise of right-wing extremism than before. Signs of this were already evident during the European elections. Climate activist Brünger from FFF explains that the situation has changed since the last federal election in 2021 – there is currently a “serious risk of regression and little opportunity for progress” regarding climate action and human rights. While all democratic parties still had climate action on their agenda at the last general election, many have dropped it since.
Other parts of the climate and environmental movement are less drastic than FFF and focus primarily on keeping the climate on the election campaign agenda. The Climate Alliance, an alliance of around 150 civil society organizations, presented a paper in January that called for climate action for a “modern country” to “sustainably secure prosperity.” The Friends of the Earth Germany (BUND) demands that climate, environmental and nature conservation issues should not be put on the back burner – no party is currently presenting an “ambitious and socially just climate action agenda.” Patrick Rohde, responsible for political strategy at BUND, believes that environmental associations have the responsibility to be a “voice of reason in times of fake news” and to draw attention to the lack of climate action and the extinction of species. He argues that the climate and environmental crises are structural crises that will not go away if they are politically ignored. In an interview with Table.Briefings, Rohde says that BUND is “putting its finger in the wound of all political parties.”
Sascha Müller-Kraenner, Managing Director of Environmental Action Germany (DUH), also does not want to recommend a specific political party. However, in conversation with Table.Briefings, he stresses that he expects all parties to fulfill their duty to protect the environment and the climate as enshrined in the German constitution and to make viable proposals accordingly. He considers it a “failure of the parties” that climate action hardly plays a role in the current election. For Müller-Kraenner, the growing membership figures of DUH and other environmental associations are a sign that the climate movement has a lot of support in society and is campaigning for issues that are important to many.
While the climate movement has become more vocal in (party) politics, various parties have taken a more restrictive approach toward climate activists and NGOs. For example, last year, the AfD asked in a minor interpellation how the number of crimes committed by climate activists had changed; in the state parliament of Lower Saxony, it even tabled a motion to ban the “Last Generation” and “Extinction Rebellion.” According to Janine Patz, research associate at the Institute for Democracy and Civil Society (IDZ), the climate movement is increasingly being criminalized and its demands delegitimized. In the election campaign, “climate protests as a whole are being problematized and increasingly labeled as extreme left-wing by the conservative spectrum.”
A study by the NGOs Amnesty International and Green Legal Impact confirms this perception and concluded in January that the scope of action of activists in Germany is increasingly being curtailed. According to the study:
The study concludes that this hinders participation in the climate movement and its effectiveness.
The Commission plans to facilitate the subsidized leasing of electric cars, heat pumps and other clean technologies this year
The initiative is part of Commission President Ursula von der Leyen’s plan to turn Europe into a hub for green industries. The draft also lists measures to reduce energy prices and local content criteria for buyers of “green” products. According to the paper, the concept should help give Europe’s industry a stronger business model for large investments in clean tech and decarbonizing energy-intensive sectors.
To this end, the Commission also wants to mobilize new funds in the short term. However, the draft does not yet contain any concrete figures. The content could also change significantly before the planned publication on February 26 – the Commission states that negotiations are ongoing.
The plan is based on six pillars:
The plans are unlikely to immediately impact prices in the energy sector. According to the Action Plan for Affordable Energy draft, the Commission will encourage member states to subsidize grid fees. It also plans to make a proposal by the middle of the year on how grid fees can incentivize more flexible electricity consumption. However, Greg Van Elsen from CAN Europe says that the big question of who will ultimately pay for the investments in the energy system remains unanswered.
As early as February 26, the Commission and the EIB plan to announce a guarantee program for Power Purchase Agreements (PPA) between electricity producers on the one side and industry and operators of electrolyzers for hydrogen production on the other. A similar program for energy efficiency investments will follow later. The aim is to make it easier for the industry to purchase electricity directly from other EU countries.
When it comes to simplifying approval procedures, the Commission wants to present “targeted updates to the legal framework for environmental assessments” and examine shorter deadlines. European energy companies should also be supported in signing more long-term contracts for LNG imports. Among other things, it will examine a model in Japan, where investments in exporting countries are financially supported.
The EU Commission wants to create local content criteria, i.e., the percentage of a company’s entire value chain produced at one location. The aim is to boost demand for EU-produced clean-tech products. According to the Commission, the exact definition of these criteria is still open. However, they will certainly go further than the resilience criteria set out in the Net Zero Industry Act.
The criteria are intended to “strengthen demand for EU-produced clean-tech products.” According to the Commission, the exact definition of these criteria is still open. However, it is fairly certain that they will go further than the resilience criteria set out in the Net Zero Industry Act.
Private demand is also being addressed. The EU Commission considers how it can incorporate requirements and non-price criteria into product regulations, for example for sustainable steel and sustainable batteries.
Exemptions from EU regulations may be required to accelerate production in lead markets. Manufacturers assume that this could apply to the production of green steel, for example, the use of which is included in the carbon footprint in the automotive industry and can therefore impact CO2 limits. This would require an amendment to the existing regulation.
In the medium term, the Commission intends to cover the enormous financial demand of around an additional 480 billion euros annually from the planned Competitiveness Fund, among other sources. However, it acknowledges that the industry also needs immediate access to capital.
Among other things, the Brussels authority wants to tap into the revenue from the European Emissions Trading System (ETS) for a new decarbonization facility by 2025. However, the draft leaves open whether the Commission wants to draw the allowances from the market stability reserve to generate additional money or simply reserve the conventional revenue for this purpose.
For the Greens in Brussels, this does not go far enough; they call for a “European Green Competitiveness Fund.” In response to a question from Table.Briefings, Bas Eickhout, head of the Green Party in the EU Parliament, explained that ETS revenues would not be enough and welcomed the Commission’s plan to encourage more private investment.
In order to secure access to raw materials needed for the energy transition and digitalization, the Commission plans to prioritize the implementation of the Critical Raw Materials Act. It aims to announce the first strategic projects for mining, processing and recycling capacities in March. An initiative to jointly organize the procurement of critical raw materials is to be created by the end of 2026.
The Circular Economy Act, also announced for the last quarter of 2026, is also intended to strengthen the market for secondary raw materials. To promote recycling, the Commission wants to limit the export of used critical raw materials. Measures for more efficient collection of materials are also on the table.
Before the end of this year, the Commission plans to review the Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism (CBAM) and present a report in the second half of the year. According to the Commission, the review will focus on the risks of circumventing the CBAM rules, the extension to other sectors and products as well as indirect emissions. A corresponding legislative proposal will follow in the first half of 2026. Lukas Knigge, Till Hoppe, Manuel Berkel, János Allenbach-Ammann, Nicolas Heronymus and Markus Grabitz.
Japan, the world’s fifth-largest greenhouse gas emitter, officially passed a new energy strategy plan and its Nationally Determined Contributions (NDC) on February 18. The government plans to:
With these plans, the country continues to pursue its current policy. This means it is not fulfilling its international obligations to decarbonize its energy supply, to phase out coal-fired power generation or to triple renewable energies – and is wasting the opportunity to take a pioneering position in the energy transition and climate action.
Japan is the world’s fourth-largest economy and the fifth-largest emitter of CO2. In 2020, then Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga declared that Japan wanted to achieve net zero by 2050. Japan’s 2030 NDC envisages a 46 percent reduction in greenhouse gas emissions by 2030 compared to 2013.
In 2023, Japan generated:
Japan has to import most of its energy. In 2023, the majority of income from the export of cars, semiconductors and other products flowed into oil and gas imports – around 26 trillion yen, approximately 160 billion euros.
Japan’s energy policy is set out in the energy strategy plan, which is reviewed every three to four years, and the NDC is discussed in parallel. The 6th IPCC report is used as a benchmark for this. According to the Climate Action Tracker, which rates the country’s previous NDC as “insufficient,” Japan as a developed country would have to aim for a reduction target of 81 percent (including CO2 absorption by forests) by 2035 compared to the base year 2013 – and not just 60 percent, as laid out in the new NDC.
Japan has made an international commitment to effective climate action and financial aid. At the G7 meeting in Germany in 2022, it pledged to decarbonize most of its energy sources by 2035. The G7 summit in Italy in 2024 agreed to phase out coal-fired power generation by 2035. And at COP28 in Dubai, the Japanese delegation agreed to triple its renewable capacities by 2030.
Japan is also one of the world’s leading donor countries for climate financing. At COP29 in Baku last year, Environment Minister Keiichirō Asao declared that “Japan pledged 70 billion US dollars of public and private support for actions to deal with climate change in developing countries over the five years until 2025.”
Shigeru Ishiba, Japan’s new Prime Minister since October 1, spoke positively about renewable energies during the election campaign. However, as with the previous Kishida government, his focus is clearly on energy security. There are no signs that he wants to advance climate policy. Officials say: “The Prime Minister is not very interested in decarbonization.” Ishiba traveled to the US in February to meet with President Donald Trump and discuss the import of liquefied natural gas from Alaska, without making any negative comments about the US withdrawal from the Paris Climate Agreement.
Until his resignation in September 2024, his predecessor, Takeo Kishida, had officially advocated decarbonization. However, after the COVID-19 pandemic and the energy crisis caused by the war in Ukraine, he mainly fought against inflation and subsidized electricity and gas to keep prices low. He also declared the “maximum use of nuclear energy,” which has not been mentioned by anyone since the Fukushima nuclear accident in 2011.
The strategic energy plan and the NDC were discussed in a working group of experts. The Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry (METI) and the Ministry of the Environment (MOE) developed the scenario. It is based on the premise that Japan is “continuing its efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in line with its current NDC, and net zero by 2050,” as Environment Minister Keiichiro Asao said in Baku. In contrast, “many countries in Europe and the US have set ambitious decarbonization targets, but some are also embarking on a realistic path that balances economic efficiency and stable supply, and the gap between targets and reality is widening,” the plan states. “Japan has already taken steps towards net zero emissions.” In other words, the plan says Japan has already taken sufficient action.
The report is a U-turn on previous projections regarding the electricity demand: The construction of new data centers and semiconductor factories will increase demand by a factor of 1.2 to around 1.2 trillion kilowatt-hours by 2040. Previously, it was assumed that the electricity demand would decrease due to a decline in population and an increase in energy efficiency. In addition, the wording from previous plans to “reduce dependence on nuclear energy as much as possible” has been removed. The plan now states that “both renewable energy and nuclear energy will be used as much as possible.”
A government representative said the NDC is “a path consistent with the goal of net-zero emissions in 2050” and will “improve predictability for achieving emissions reductions and economic growth simultaneously.” These figures are in line with the proposals of the Liberal Democratic Party and Keidanren, Japan’s largest business organization.
Since the beginning of the debate, environmental NGOs and young people have been signing petitions calling for the expansion of renewable energy and more ambitious NDCs. The business community, which is forced to procure renewable energy, has also been calling for further measures. The Japan Climate Leaders Partnership (JCLP), an organization of companies concerned with climate change, called to “maintain international competitiveness” and demanded a renewable energy share of 60 percent or higher in 2035. 250 companies, including Ricoh, Toda Corporation and AEON, are members of the JCLP.
We thought that we were done fact-checking climate issues. But no: As soon as he took office, the new US Secretary of Energy Chris Wright heavily criticized the German energy transition – with many questionable arguments. Malte Kreutzfeldt took a closer look at his claims. And lo and behold: Hardly any of the figures Wright cited stand up to a reality check. Donald Trump doesn’t care about that, but we do.
Similarly far removed from reality is Japan’s new NDC, which Keisuke Katori has dissected for us. And climate and energy issues were also part of the German election campaigns, with plenty of fake news, distortions and plain ignorance. And Lisa Kuner has examined how the climate movement has positioned itself in recent months: more politically than ever before.
On Sunday, it will be decided who will shape future climate and energy policy in the German parliament. We are just as eager as you are to see a new government with new ways of solving old problems. And hopefully, the debate will return to facts and science once the election ends. In any case, we will keep a close eye on all that will be decided. And what is not.
In his 30-minute inaugural speech as the new US Secretary of Energy on February 5, Chris Wright dedicated around four minutes to the German energy transition. While it is often cited as a shining example elsewhere, Wright presented the energy transition as a warning for the US. However, the facts and figures he cited are largely false or misleading. Climate.Table offers a correction and assessment.
One of Wright’s central claims is that the electricity prices in Germany have tripled in the last 15 years; the context suggests that he was referring to the price for private households. This claim is incorrect. In fact, the price of electricity has risen by around 50 percent during this period (source); although this is an increase, it is not dramatically higher than the general inflation rate, which was 34 percent during this period.
Even if the statement refers to the electricity exchange price, it is still inaccurate. In 2024, it was almost twice as high as in 2009 (source). And this increase was not caused by the energy transition, but primarily by gas prices, which have risen sharply due to the discontinuation of Russian pipeline imports. This is evident firstly from the fact that the electricity exchange price fell to a low in 2020 and only increased in the wake of the Russian attack on Ukraine. Secondly, a comparable increase was also observed in countries such as France and Poland, which have different energy policies from Germany.
Another of Wright’s central claims is that Germany’s industrial output has fallen by 20 percent over 15 years, parallel to the energy transition. However, the opposite is true: According to the Federal Statistical Office, industrial production in Germany did not decline between 2009 and 2024, but increased significantly by 10.6 percent. The figures compared are adjusted for inflation and calendar effects (source). The impression Wright conveyed that the German economy is no longer competitive internationally does not reflect reality either: At 239 billion euros in 2024, the German export surplus was 73 percent higher in nominal terms than 15 years previously. Trade with the US alone generated a surplus of 70 billion euros (source).
Wright’s unspecified statement that the energy transition has made the electricity supply unreliable is also inaccurate. In fact, it was more reliable in 2023 than in 2009, with an average outage time of less than 13 minutes per year (source) – and more reliable by a factor of 10 to 30 than in the US, which, depending on the calculation method, had outage times of between 118 and 366 minutes per year in 2023 (source).
Wright also suggests that the energy transition is of little benefit to the climate, stating that the share of fossil fuels in Germany’s primary energy consumption has only fallen from 80 percent to 74 percent since 2010. Although the decline was even slightly lower (source), the composition of primary energy consumption is not a suitable indicator for determining the carbon footprint. Because fossil-fuel power plants release more than half of the primary energy used as waste heat, primary energy demand drops significantly when switching to renewable energies. As a result, the proportion of remaining fossil fuels remains comparatively high, even if their use decreases significantly in absolute terms.
To assess the actual effect of the energy transition on the climate, absolute figures are more meaningful. These show that energy production from fossil fuels in Germany has declined by 27 percent since 2010. This has cut German greenhouse gas emissions by almost 30 percent in the same period (source 1/source 2). By comparison, the United States only managed to reduce emissions by 14 percent in the same period.
Correct – but not relevant to the argument – is Wright’s statement that electricity output in Germany is 20 percent lower than 20 years ago. However, this is not a sign of lower efficiency, but a consequence of lower demand. Around half of the decrease can be attributed to lower domestic electricity consumption (partly due to greater efficiency and partly due to lower production in energy-intensive industries). The other half of the decrease is because Germany exported less electricity to neighboring countries.
The statement that installed capacity in Germany has risen from 100 to 240 gigawatts in the last 15 years is true, at least based on the trend; it has actually risen from 144 to 263 gigawatts. However, this increase is not a problem, but a logical consequence of the fact that wind and solar power plants have significantly fewer full-load hours than fossil fuel power plants in the past and therefore require a higher installed capacity overall.
With the remark that winter temperatures in Northern Europe are cold and cloudy, Wright suggests that using solar power in Germany makes little sense. Disregarding that Germany is not geographically part of Northern Europe and that solar cells work more efficiently at low temperatures, it is quite true that solar systems produce significantly less energy in the winter than in the summer due to the shorter days and the lower position of the sun. However, this is not a problem because solar systems complement wind turbines, which produce significantly more electricity in winter than in summer (source). In total, solar cells generated just under 13 percent of Germany’s electricity last year.
Wright put the cost of the energy transition to date at 500 billion dollars. In absolute terms, this figure is correct; there are even higher estimates depending on what is included. However, this figure is not very indicative. For one thing, the sum accrued over 20 years, which means that it is actually around 25 billion dollars per year. Secondly, the number would have to be compared with the investments in the energy system and additional expenditure on fossil fuel imports that would have been necessary without the energy transition. Furthermore, it would have to be taken into account that renewable electricity generates costs due to the guaranteed remuneration, but in return, lowers the electricity exchange prices due to its low marginal costs.
Wearing a dress with the words “Donald & Elon & Alice & Friedrich?,” climate activist Luisa Neubauer caused a stir at the opening of the Berlinale last Thursday. She protested against the CDU’s current policies. A video of her Berlinale appearance, in which she calls for defending democracy “with all our might,” was viewed more than 200,000 times on TikTok. The following day, there was a climate strike across Germany – but unlike a few years ago, only a few tens of thousands took to the streets instead of millions.
Fridays for Future (FFF) has adopted a clearer political stance in the run-up to the federal elections than in previous years – “Climate justice means anti-fascism,” says a blog article in which the activists explain why they believe climate action and the fight against the right go hand in hand. Local FFF groups have also rallied in many cities for anti-right-wing demonstrations in recent weeks – and here, too, criticism is often directed not only at the far-right AfD, but also at the Christian Democratic Union (CDU). “The way the CDU is currently positioning itself is a threat to climate action,” says Pauline Brünger, FFF spokesperson. However, she says this does not mean there can be no convincing conservative climate policy. Last year, climate activist and capitalism critic Lisa Poettinger expressed herself even more clearly – she explicitly banned CSU politicians from a demonstration by announcing on X that she was “not a fan of right-wingers of any stripe.”
This clearer political positioning beyond climate issues is becoming more frequent: Franziska Martini from the Institute for Democracy and Civil Society in Jena says that the climate movement is even more explicitly committed to democracy and human rights and against the rise of right-wing extremism than before. Signs of this were already evident during the European elections. Climate activist Brünger from FFF explains that the situation has changed since the last federal election in 2021 – there is currently a “serious risk of regression and little opportunity for progress” regarding climate action and human rights. While all democratic parties still had climate action on their agenda at the last general election, many have dropped it since.
Other parts of the climate and environmental movement are less drastic than FFF and focus primarily on keeping the climate on the election campaign agenda. The Climate Alliance, an alliance of around 150 civil society organizations, presented a paper in January that called for climate action for a “modern country” to “sustainably secure prosperity.” The Friends of the Earth Germany (BUND) demands that climate, environmental and nature conservation issues should not be put on the back burner – no party is currently presenting an “ambitious and socially just climate action agenda.” Patrick Rohde, responsible for political strategy at BUND, believes that environmental associations have the responsibility to be a “voice of reason in times of fake news” and to draw attention to the lack of climate action and the extinction of species. He argues that the climate and environmental crises are structural crises that will not go away if they are politically ignored. In an interview with Table.Briefings, Rohde says that BUND is “putting its finger in the wound of all political parties.”
Sascha Müller-Kraenner, Managing Director of Environmental Action Germany (DUH), also does not want to recommend a specific political party. However, in conversation with Table.Briefings, he stresses that he expects all parties to fulfill their duty to protect the environment and the climate as enshrined in the German constitution and to make viable proposals accordingly. He considers it a “failure of the parties” that climate action hardly plays a role in the current election. For Müller-Kraenner, the growing membership figures of DUH and other environmental associations are a sign that the climate movement has a lot of support in society and is campaigning for issues that are important to many.
While the climate movement has become more vocal in (party) politics, various parties have taken a more restrictive approach toward climate activists and NGOs. For example, last year, the AfD asked in a minor interpellation how the number of crimes committed by climate activists had changed; in the state parliament of Lower Saxony, it even tabled a motion to ban the “Last Generation” and “Extinction Rebellion.” According to Janine Patz, research associate at the Institute for Democracy and Civil Society (IDZ), the climate movement is increasingly being criminalized and its demands delegitimized. In the election campaign, “climate protests as a whole are being problematized and increasingly labeled as extreme left-wing by the conservative spectrum.”
A study by the NGOs Amnesty International and Green Legal Impact confirms this perception and concluded in January that the scope of action of activists in Germany is increasingly being curtailed. According to the study:
The study concludes that this hinders participation in the climate movement and its effectiveness.
The Commission plans to facilitate the subsidized leasing of electric cars, heat pumps and other clean technologies this year
The initiative is part of Commission President Ursula von der Leyen’s plan to turn Europe into a hub for green industries. The draft also lists measures to reduce energy prices and local content criteria for buyers of “green” products. According to the paper, the concept should help give Europe’s industry a stronger business model for large investments in clean tech and decarbonizing energy-intensive sectors.
To this end, the Commission also wants to mobilize new funds in the short term. However, the draft does not yet contain any concrete figures. The content could also change significantly before the planned publication on February 26 – the Commission states that negotiations are ongoing.
The plan is based on six pillars:
The plans are unlikely to immediately impact prices in the energy sector. According to the Action Plan for Affordable Energy draft, the Commission will encourage member states to subsidize grid fees. It also plans to make a proposal by the middle of the year on how grid fees can incentivize more flexible electricity consumption. However, Greg Van Elsen from CAN Europe says that the big question of who will ultimately pay for the investments in the energy system remains unanswered.
As early as February 26, the Commission and the EIB plan to announce a guarantee program for Power Purchase Agreements (PPA) between electricity producers on the one side and industry and operators of electrolyzers for hydrogen production on the other. A similar program for energy efficiency investments will follow later. The aim is to make it easier for the industry to purchase electricity directly from other EU countries.
When it comes to simplifying approval procedures, the Commission wants to present “targeted updates to the legal framework for environmental assessments” and examine shorter deadlines. European energy companies should also be supported in signing more long-term contracts for LNG imports. Among other things, it will examine a model in Japan, where investments in exporting countries are financially supported.
The EU Commission wants to create local content criteria, i.e., the percentage of a company’s entire value chain produced at one location. The aim is to boost demand for EU-produced clean-tech products. According to the Commission, the exact definition of these criteria is still open. However, they will certainly go further than the resilience criteria set out in the Net Zero Industry Act.
The criteria are intended to “strengthen demand for EU-produced clean-tech products.” According to the Commission, the exact definition of these criteria is still open. However, it is fairly certain that they will go further than the resilience criteria set out in the Net Zero Industry Act.
Private demand is also being addressed. The EU Commission considers how it can incorporate requirements and non-price criteria into product regulations, for example for sustainable steel and sustainable batteries.
Exemptions from EU regulations may be required to accelerate production in lead markets. Manufacturers assume that this could apply to the production of green steel, for example, the use of which is included in the carbon footprint in the automotive industry and can therefore impact CO2 limits. This would require an amendment to the existing regulation.
In the medium term, the Commission intends to cover the enormous financial demand of around an additional 480 billion euros annually from the planned Competitiveness Fund, among other sources. However, it acknowledges that the industry also needs immediate access to capital.
Among other things, the Brussels authority wants to tap into the revenue from the European Emissions Trading System (ETS) for a new decarbonization facility by 2025. However, the draft leaves open whether the Commission wants to draw the allowances from the market stability reserve to generate additional money or simply reserve the conventional revenue for this purpose.
For the Greens in Brussels, this does not go far enough; they call for a “European Green Competitiveness Fund.” In response to a question from Table.Briefings, Bas Eickhout, head of the Green Party in the EU Parliament, explained that ETS revenues would not be enough and welcomed the Commission’s plan to encourage more private investment.
In order to secure access to raw materials needed for the energy transition and digitalization, the Commission plans to prioritize the implementation of the Critical Raw Materials Act. It aims to announce the first strategic projects for mining, processing and recycling capacities in March. An initiative to jointly organize the procurement of critical raw materials is to be created by the end of 2026.
The Circular Economy Act, also announced for the last quarter of 2026, is also intended to strengthen the market for secondary raw materials. To promote recycling, the Commission wants to limit the export of used critical raw materials. Measures for more efficient collection of materials are also on the table.
Before the end of this year, the Commission plans to review the Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism (CBAM) and present a report in the second half of the year. According to the Commission, the review will focus on the risks of circumventing the CBAM rules, the extension to other sectors and products as well as indirect emissions. A corresponding legislative proposal will follow in the first half of 2026. Lukas Knigge, Till Hoppe, Manuel Berkel, János Allenbach-Ammann, Nicolas Heronymus and Markus Grabitz.
Japan, the world’s fifth-largest greenhouse gas emitter, officially passed a new energy strategy plan and its Nationally Determined Contributions (NDC) on February 18. The government plans to:
With these plans, the country continues to pursue its current policy. This means it is not fulfilling its international obligations to decarbonize its energy supply, to phase out coal-fired power generation or to triple renewable energies – and is wasting the opportunity to take a pioneering position in the energy transition and climate action.
Japan is the world’s fourth-largest economy and the fifth-largest emitter of CO2. In 2020, then Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga declared that Japan wanted to achieve net zero by 2050. Japan’s 2030 NDC envisages a 46 percent reduction in greenhouse gas emissions by 2030 compared to 2013.
In 2023, Japan generated:
Japan has to import most of its energy. In 2023, the majority of income from the export of cars, semiconductors and other products flowed into oil and gas imports – around 26 trillion yen, approximately 160 billion euros.
Japan’s energy policy is set out in the energy strategy plan, which is reviewed every three to four years, and the NDC is discussed in parallel. The 6th IPCC report is used as a benchmark for this. According to the Climate Action Tracker, which rates the country’s previous NDC as “insufficient,” Japan as a developed country would have to aim for a reduction target of 81 percent (including CO2 absorption by forests) by 2035 compared to the base year 2013 – and not just 60 percent, as laid out in the new NDC.
Japan has made an international commitment to effective climate action and financial aid. At the G7 meeting in Germany in 2022, it pledged to decarbonize most of its energy sources by 2035. The G7 summit in Italy in 2024 agreed to phase out coal-fired power generation by 2035. And at COP28 in Dubai, the Japanese delegation agreed to triple its renewable capacities by 2030.
Japan is also one of the world’s leading donor countries for climate financing. At COP29 in Baku last year, Environment Minister Keiichirō Asao declared that “Japan pledged 70 billion US dollars of public and private support for actions to deal with climate change in developing countries over the five years until 2025.”
Shigeru Ishiba, Japan’s new Prime Minister since October 1, spoke positively about renewable energies during the election campaign. However, as with the previous Kishida government, his focus is clearly on energy security. There are no signs that he wants to advance climate policy. Officials say: “The Prime Minister is not very interested in decarbonization.” Ishiba traveled to the US in February to meet with President Donald Trump and discuss the import of liquefied natural gas from Alaska, without making any negative comments about the US withdrawal from the Paris Climate Agreement.
Until his resignation in September 2024, his predecessor, Takeo Kishida, had officially advocated decarbonization. However, after the COVID-19 pandemic and the energy crisis caused by the war in Ukraine, he mainly fought against inflation and subsidized electricity and gas to keep prices low. He also declared the “maximum use of nuclear energy,” which has not been mentioned by anyone since the Fukushima nuclear accident in 2011.
The strategic energy plan and the NDC were discussed in a working group of experts. The Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry (METI) and the Ministry of the Environment (MOE) developed the scenario. It is based on the premise that Japan is “continuing its efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in line with its current NDC, and net zero by 2050,” as Environment Minister Keiichiro Asao said in Baku. In contrast, “many countries in Europe and the US have set ambitious decarbonization targets, but some are also embarking on a realistic path that balances economic efficiency and stable supply, and the gap between targets and reality is widening,” the plan states. “Japan has already taken steps towards net zero emissions.” In other words, the plan says Japan has already taken sufficient action.
The report is a U-turn on previous projections regarding the electricity demand: The construction of new data centers and semiconductor factories will increase demand by a factor of 1.2 to around 1.2 trillion kilowatt-hours by 2040. Previously, it was assumed that the electricity demand would decrease due to a decline in population and an increase in energy efficiency. In addition, the wording from previous plans to “reduce dependence on nuclear energy as much as possible” has been removed. The plan now states that “both renewable energy and nuclear energy will be used as much as possible.”
A government representative said the NDC is “a path consistent with the goal of net-zero emissions in 2050” and will “improve predictability for achieving emissions reductions and economic growth simultaneously.” These figures are in line with the proposals of the Liberal Democratic Party and Keidanren, Japan’s largest business organization.
Since the beginning of the debate, environmental NGOs and young people have been signing petitions calling for the expansion of renewable energy and more ambitious NDCs. The business community, which is forced to procure renewable energy, has also been calling for further measures. The Japan Climate Leaders Partnership (JCLP), an organization of companies concerned with climate change, called to “maintain international competitiveness” and demanded a renewable energy share of 60 percent or higher in 2035. 250 companies, including Ricoh, Toda Corporation and AEON, are members of the JCLP.
