New government in NRW wants to outperform predecessors’ climate goals

The new government of conservative CDU and business-oriented FDP in Germany’s most populous state North Rhine-Westphalia (NRW) seems intent on ramping up climate protection goals and quickly remedying air pollution in inner cities associated with car emissions, Kirsten Bialdiga and Thomas Reisener write in Bonn’s General-Anzeiger newspaper. NRW’s new economy minister Andreas Pinkwart (FDP) said it was possible to exceed the climate protection goals of the previous state government of Greens and Social Democrats (SPD) and to reduce CO₂ emissions by 25 percent by the end of 2020 over 1990. Pinkwart said the state could further decrease its lignite capacities and invest in infrastructure for electric mobility, the authors say.
In a separate article on Welt Online, Pinkwart defended the state government’s decision to impose stricter regulation for wind power expansion. “So far, NRW focused almost exclusively on wind power. I think that is unfavourable,” he said, arguing that repeated protests against new wind parks showed that maintaining acceptance was necessary. However, Pinkwart added that the wind power projects that had already received a license, along with the replacement of older turbines with newer models, would eventually double the state’s wind power generation.

Find the article in Welt Online in German here.

See the CLEW factsheet Facts on the German state elections in NRW for more information.