“The upcoming task for this and future governments is admittedly enormous, but doable” – a quote about the climate target, albeit about the one in Bremen: in 2021 it read this way in the final report of the Enquete Commission on Climate Protection, which had prepared the path to Bremen’s ambitious Climate Protection Act.
The citizens had not been consulted, but for this the Enquete Commission had met across party lines. The goal to become climate-neutral by 2038 was ultimately adopted jointly by all state parliamentary factions: although after numerous expert reports and a lot of work in the commission it was clear to everyone how difficult it would be, Left, Greens, SPD, CDU, and FDP could agree on it.
It should also be binding and verifiable: under the grand name “Committee for Oversight and Parliamentary Control of the Implementation of the Enquete Commission’s Recommendations, Climate Protection Strategy for the State of Bremen’” a quarterly monitoring body of the government should keep an eye on it.
It’s not as if nothing has happened yet: in July the Climate Action Plan was updated; and the Bremen Senate publicly informs about its climate protection activities on a website. Of 245 individual measures, 16 have been completed, another 185 are on schedule: educational measures, a solar roof obligation, the coal phase-out in 2024. Eighty-two percent of the measures are thus in the green range, which doesn’t look bad in the pie chart on the website.
Whether the ambitious targets can be achieved may also depend on the remaining 18 percent, which are late or have even been postponed – including the not-insignificant strategy for energetic building renovation (no money, no staff).
There is a lack of data on greenhouse gas savings
More importantly, no one can quantify which savings the measures have achieved so far. By 2023 the reduction of greenhouse gases compared with 1990 should be 35 percent, by 2025 41 percent. The monitoring of interim results is mandatory in the law. Yet there are no figures available, not for 2025, not for 2023.
The Statistical Office in the Interior Ministry should have taken over the CO₂ calculation, but in the budget it did not receive any extra money for it. The responsible Interior Senator Ulrich Mäurer (SPD) reacted with outright refusal. “I could save police or fire-brigade personnel for this,” he said in the committee. “But I will not do that.” At least, it is now clear: the controlling should now be outsourced to an external institute.
Such a breach of the controlling rules, the Hamburg Senate would do well to remember, does not have immediate consequences either. But perhaps they already know that there as well.
