Germany discusses, Germany procrastinates, and Germany could gamble away everything. "The critical moment at which Germany and Europe can create the conditions for achieving the Paris climate targets will soon have passed." This sentence marks the beginning of a twenty-page paper by the nine-member expert group "Climate and Energy" at the National Academy. It is a kind of roadmap for accelerating the energy transition, at least a proposal with "six guiding ideas" from some of the country's leading economic, energy and climate experts.

Renewables have top priority

Joachim Müller-Jung

Editor in the arts section, responsible for the section "Nature and Science".

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Whether the paper can be more than a speech from a professional mouth, or whether it gets lost in the political cacophony about nuclear power, route expansion, drives, eFuel or gas supply, should become clear by the end of March at the latest. Because then it is to be put up for discussion at the research summit with politics, business and science in Berlin, which has been organized since 2015. No more postponement, that is the core concern of the expert group, but rather "consistent action - now". The right framework conditions for private investment and their reliability are central to this. But there is also talk of "effective incentives and requirements for more efficient energy use". The expansion of renewable energies should be "promoted quickly and with the highest priority". But that's not all. "Effective and sustainable measures in the medium and long term must be prioritised. This requires transformation strategies that are designed from the goals to be achieved and are therefore as technology-open as possible." Only once does the term openness to technology appear here, and at the end of the paper it becomes clear how different it is meant in the paper in contrast to the technology openness demanded by the Free Democrats in the traffic light government or the Federal Minister of Research. High-tech solutions such as nuclear fusion "are unlikely to play a role in achieving climate neutrality by 2045" - at most on a long-term timescale, they could supplement the "then established renewable energy sources".

Initiating carbon dioxide removal

No high-flying dreams in the distance, but concrete, quick solution ideas today. This also includes those that will only take effect in a few decades. For example, the central idea calls for a "systemic carbon cycle management to be established". The dumping and recycling of carbon dioxide from the air (CCS and CCU techniques) is intended to alleviate the worsening emission situation by the middle of the century. To this end, pilot projects should now be started at European level, which should ultimately help to remove or recycle 2050.2 to 3.7 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide from the air by 4. These technologies must be able to be quickly tested, certified and, if possible, integrated into emissions trading.

Emissions trading as a tax instrument

Guiding principle two calls for the completion of European emissions trading - to a long-term "and all-embracing", i.e. the decisive steering framework for European climate policy. In the opinion of the Leopoldina experts, the EU member states and Germany in particular are far from having created the prerequisites, neither legally nor financially. In the Federal Government, completely new management structures would have to be set up quickly, which "bundle the different departmental responsibilities and strategically align them in the EU".