“Adieu Paris!”

Angela Merkel’s chancellery officials have "shredded" the formerly ambitious Climate Action Plan 2050 proposal by environment minister Barbara Hendricks, Der Spiegel reports. The chancellery, which was to evaluate the draft over the summer, has cut almost all concrete targets from the plan, effectively distancing itself from the outcome of the Paris climate deal, write Horand Knaup and Gerald Traufetter. It also ear-marked for further examination the “complete long-term switch to renewables in the power system”, goals to reduce meat consumption by 2050, the switch to electric mobility, and plans for a commission to devise the phase-out of coal, the article says. Plans for “carbon neutral” power production were too extensive, the chancellery said in a letter to the environment ministry seen by Der Spiegel. The cabinet will not make a decision on the Climate Action Plan 2050 before October 2016, the article says.

Read the article (behind paywall) here.

Read a CLEW article on the latest version of the Climate Action Plan draft and a factsheet on the plan.