Mitigation Country Study for Germany

The German CO2 emission reductions have been backed by the reorganisation of the former German Democratic Republic. Many of the reductions could be achieved within the first years after the fall of the wall. The development in secondary industry is a clear indication. Later, beginning in the later 1990’s, the annual rates of decline in carbon exhaust fell significantly. If these are used for extrapolating future trends, the long term goals of reducing the CO2 emissions by 40% between 1990 and 2020 and 80% till 2050 would clearly not be achieved. Also more precise scenarios come to the conclusion that the goals will be missed if no further measures are introduced. The most problematic subsector is the electricity production, since it is responsible for by far the biggest share of the total of carbon emissions, the production is growing relatively fast and can be expected to escalate its carbon intensity drastically if no striking measures are taken to avoid this development. On the other hand there are known possibilities to avoid the negative development in the electricity production. One way which would be favourable for the national economy is the use of renewable energies in an international cooperation with other countries in and around Europe. This cooperation would also open up new development perspectives for the poorer cooperating economies. Other strategies – which should be followed anyway – would be to take much more effective legislative measures as well as spending much more money on energy research.