In Germany, the risk of not being able to meet the self-imposed climate goals is increasing, as a current study shows. Accordingly, there is often a lack of climate protection measures and support for climate goals in politics, business and society, and in some cases the trend is even declining. Only when it comes to local climate protection and climate lawsuits does significant progress seem to be being made. But that alone is not enough to manage the climate change, emphasizes the research team.
The federal government has set itself the goal of Germany becoming climate neutral by 2045. But can this climate target be met? A research team led by Stefan Aykut from the University of Hamburg has now investigated this. It is the second analysis of this kind and complements the first study on the “Climate Transition Outlook” from 2024. The social scientists used research and their own interviews to analyze the current status of climate protection in Germany. They focused on seven topic areas: climate policy at the national and global level, local climate protection through the actions of municipalities and companies, consumption patterns in society, civil climate movements and climate lawsuits.
Climate protection has so far been a rather individual matter
The result: Five of these processes contribute predominantly or at least partially to the goal of climate neutrality. Climate protection in Germany is therefore primarily supported by administrations and initiatives at local and municipal levels. In recent years, structures have been built there that have a long-term impact and can therefore withstand the current anti-ecological mood in the country. The researchers recommend that these largely resilient climate protection efforts should be further expanded. Municipalities should receive greater financial support and climate protection initiatives from society should be legally and politically strengthened.
“Climate lawsuits are also an effective means of increasing climate protection,” says Aykut. “If the decision is positive, they have a long-term signaling effect and provide arguments for similar lawsuits.” In Germany in recent years, more and more people have filed lawsuits due to inadequate climate protection – for example against administrations, state governments or companies. At the same time, the proportion of those who were successful in their lawsuit has increased, as the team determined. Climate lawsuits force politicians and businesses to act and motivate other plaintiffs.
However, efforts in these fields alone are still not enough to make Germany climate neutral by 2045. Achieving the climate target is currently being prevented primarily by climate-damaging private consumption trends and less support among parts of the population. With a few small exceptions, “there have been no profound changes to climate-friendly consumption patterns in Germany so far,” the researchers report. Among other things, Germans cling to their unsustainable cars, air travel, living arrangements and dietary patterns. But hesitant and inadequate action by business and politics also endangers the overall success of climate protection. Taken together, it is currently hardly realistic and “not very plausible” that Germany will achieve its climate goals, according to the team.
Challenges for German climate policy
The researchers emphasize that the individual actors can only create a “climate change society” together. Currently, however, they often hinder each other when it comes to climate protection and thus cause a backtrack. “One cause is blockade and escalation spirals that reinforce themselves. If climate protection is delayed because necessary measures were delayed, reducing CO2 often becomes more expensive,” explains Aykut. “As a result, support for climate protection can dwindle and conflicts arise if the impression arises that costs are not being distributed fairly. As a result, climate policy measures are increasingly delayed – which causes costs to rise even further.”
As an example of this counterproductive dynamic, Aykut and his colleagues cite, among other things, the debate over the Building Energy Act, also known as the “Heating Act”. With this law, the traffic light government wanted to prepare the country for the costs of CO2 emissions from buildings to be increased across Europe from 2027. The increased CO2 price in the building sector is intended to create incentives for climate-friendly renovations and to ensure that emissions from heating in particular fall more quickly. However, so that heating does not suddenly cost significantly more in 2027 and so that emissions fall before then, the federal government wanted to pass the law that new heating systems installed from 2025 should be operated primarily with renewable energy. That would have required investments, for example in heat pumps, but would have reduced heating costs in the long term. However, this decision was significantly weakened again due to pressure from the AfD, CDU and FDP, who exploited the law politically for their own benefit.
In addition, a targeted media counter-campaign full of misinformation about the heating law caused uncertainty among the population and ultimately had the opposite effect, as the team found: homeowners bought more climate-damaging oil and gas heating systems and invested less in lower-emission heat pumps. “Now there will be dissatisfaction with a – actually sensible – measure if heating becomes more expensive from 2027,” said Aykut. “Financial compensation for poorer households, for example climate money, and long-term, reliable implementation of measures should therefore be a priority. Successful climate policy requires strong support from the population.”
The researchers expect that such blockade and escalation spirals can also occur in the future when politicians propose new climate protection laws. Whether and how quickly these are implemented depends on how well they explain their goals, how well they defuse the resulting costs and tensions and ultimately defend their decisions against political instrumentalization.
Source: University of Hamburg; Specialist article: Climate change outlook 2025, Transcript Verlag, doi: 10.14361/9783839468609