BERLIN (Reuters) – Germany faces a gigantic task to achieve the climate protection goals it has set for itself, Climate Minister Robert Habeck said on Tuesday, unveiling a report that showed the country risked missing emissions targets for 2030.
In order to hit its target of cutting CO2 emissions to 65% of 1990 levels by the start of the next decade, the country would need to reduce energy consumption by 20-25%, the ministry’s report said.
“The task is big. It’s gigantic,” Habeck told a news conference. “We managed to cut emissions by 15 million tonnes from 2010-2020, and from 2022 to 2030 we have to cut them by 40 million tonnes a year on average.”
Climate policy is one of the closest-watched areas for the new coalition government as Europe’s biggest economy shifts towards carbon neutrality.
(Reporting by Markus Wacket and Zuzanna Szymanska, writing by Kirsti Knolle and Thomas Escritt; Editing by Madeline Chambers)
