Germany sets 2045 fossil fuel phaseout plan

Germany unveiled a roadmap on Wednesday for abandoning fossil fuels by 2045, setting out how Europe's largest economy says it will move away from coal, oil and gas.

The Environment Ministry said the measures include building renewable power, greater reliance on electric cars and using European Union carbon trading schemes to push industrial polluters away from fossil fuels.

The ministry said Germany was only the third country, after France and the Netherlands, to present such a plan, although almost 200 countries pledged at COP28 climate talks in 2023 to wean off fossil fuels.

German Environment Minister Carsten Schneider told the UN General Assembly that the Middle East war showed why fossil fuels should be phased out.

“It is not just extreme weather events around the world that demonstrate how urgently we need to do more to protect the climate,” he said. “If the situation in the Strait of Hormuz determines whether people can still afford their daily commute to work, that is not a good state of affairs.”

Fentje Jacobsen, a climate policy adviser at WWF, said the roadmap largely restated existing initiatives without adding “new ideas or additional ambitions”. She said the current government was meanwhile planning to rely less on renewables and more on gas.

Energy Minister Katherina Reiche favours building new gas-fired power plants to help stabilise the electricity grid and offset the intermittency of renewable sources such as wind and solar.