Environment ministry's u-turn on climate targets is “sleazy behaviour” - commentary

With its reaction to reports on Germany missing its own 2020 emissions reduction goals, Germany’s environment ministry (BMUB) has given a prime example of political opportunism, Thorsten Knuf writes in a commentary for Frankfurter Rundschau. In early September, only shortly before the federal elections, think tank Agora Energiewende* published a report which stated that Germany was headed for a clear miss of its 2020 goals, an assessment that the BMUB, under the leadership of the Social Democrats (SPD), downplayed as being “extremely negative” at the time, Knuf says. Now, after the elections saw the SPD losing government participation, the ministry suddenly comes up with a projection similar to that of Agora Energiewende to urge the SPD’s successors to step up efforts on climate protection. “Such behaviour is just sleazy,” Knuf says.

*Like the Clean Energy Wire, Agora Energiewende is a project funded by Stiftung Mercator and the European Climate Foundation.

See the CLEW article Germany set to widely miss climate targets, env ministry warns for background.