“It’s our duty to limit climate change”

In an interview with Angela Schmid in WirtschaftsWoche, Daniela Jacob, head of Climate Service Center Germany (GERICS), said Germany’s phase out of nuclear energy would result in a short-term increase in carbon emissions because coal cannot be substituted as an established base-load power source in Germany in the short term. As a result, it is unclear whether the short-term reduction targets for 2020 — a reduction in greenhouse gas emissions by 40 percent compared to 1990 — can actually be achieved. Jacob added that it was hardly possible to clearly predict the achievability of the 2050 goal of reducing greenhouse emissions by 80 percent compared to 1990 due to the long time period.

Read the interview in German here.

See a CLEW factsheet on Germany's greenhouse gas emissions and climate targets.