Conservatives' election programme sticks to national climate goals
The conservative alliance of German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s CDU and its Bavarian sister party CSU has pledged to stick to the country’s national climate targets, including the long fought-over Climate Action Plan 2050. The two parties’ joint programme for September’s federal election calls the Paris Agreement on climate the “biggest success to date in international efforts to contain global warming”, adding that the parties regret the decision by the United States to leave the agreement. “Together with France and other countries, we will champion decisively for the preservation and success of the agreement,” the programme reads. It contains a commitment to expand renewable energy use, and states that electricity supply has to be “secure, affordable, and clean”. Overall, the programme is weak on detailed energy and climate policy proposals.
On climate, energy, clean transport, and heating, the parties say they aim to:
- continue the integration of renewables into the energy market
- continue research into, and development of, storage options, in order to make Germany a home to battery cell production again
- make accelerated grid expansion a priority
- stick to the Climate Action Plan 2050 by using market-based instruments rather than government orders
- create a structural development plan for coal regions in parallel with the “long-term exit from lignite”
- drive the coupling of the power, transport, and heating sectors
- keep modern diesel cars as an important option until the final breakthrough of e-cars, and reject bans on specific types of cars
- support the transition to alternative fuel vehicles in transportation, and pursue an open technology strategy to promote the use of alternative fuels, e-mobility, and fuel cells
- create a country-wide infrastructure of 50,000 charging stations for electric and hydrogen vehicles
- create a framework to make Germany a market leader in alternative and environmentally friendly modes of transportation, such as electric and autonomous vehicles
- make Germany a leader in new mobility concepts based on digitalisation
Find the full programme in German on the CDU’s website and listen to Merkel’s comments in German here.
Read more about other parties’ energy and climate policy ideas in the CLEW dossier on the German federal elections.