Conservative proposal for offsetting Germany's emissions outside the EU eyed critically by climate researchers

Plans to adapt Germany’s Climate Action Law to allow for national emissions compensation measures to also take place in countries outside of the European Union have been criticised for potentially opening the door to fraudulent projects that could undermine effective action. The proposal by Germany’s conservative alliance of the Christian Democrat Union (CDU) and the Christian Social Union (CSU) to expand compensation mechanisms beyond the EU would amount to a “gigantic step backwards”, researcher Niklas Höhne from the New Climate Institute told energy policy newsletter Tagesspiegel Background. As almost all countries would lag behind their national emissions reduction targets, “there’s nothing to gain abroad for Germany” and additional reductions could not be expected, he argued.

The idea, launched by the CDU/CSU alliance, comes from leaked coalition negotiation papers with the Social Democrats (SPD), the parties which together look set to form the next government. The CDU/CSU proposed that “residual emissions” could be offset by “credible CO2 reduction measures in partner countries in line with global and European rules”, and that these options should also become anchored in national and European climate laws, for example in the EU's Emissions Trading System (ETS).

The idea is also viewed with suspicion within the conservative alliance, which is why the proposal would likely be phrased to call for offsetting abroad only “to a limited extent”, according to Tagesspiegel Background.

The Climate Action Network Europe (CAN) last week called on the EU to not soften its legislation on emissions reduction in the run-up to introducing a 2040 climate target and explicitly make emissions reduction a domestic task. Felix Schenuit, researcher at the German think tank SWP, said that looming policy decisions, such as the new ETS 2  that will also include transport and buildings in emissions trading, need to be discussed early and involve all available options, which may include new certificates. “It’s better to think about possible policy designs early on instead of the mid-2030s under massive political pressure,” he argued. However, it would be wrong to think that this would spare Germany drastic domestic emission reduction measures.

Existing German and European laws ensure that offsetting measures for emissions reduction across different sectors must be made “within the EU”. This condition is considered crucial by many climate researchers, after several projects in recent years that were based on the so-called Clean Development Mechanism in the UN climate policy framework were found to be questionable, especially those carried out in poorer countries.