Germany

Critically Insufficient4°C+ World

NDCs with this rating fall well outside of a country’s “fair share” range and are not at all consistent with holding warming to below 2°C let alone with the Paris Agreement’s stronger 1.5°C limit. If all government NDCs were in this range, warming would exceed 4°C. For sectors, the rating indicates that the target is consistent with warming of greater than 4°C if all other sectors were to follow the same approach.

Highly insufficient< 4°C World

NDCs with this rating fall outside of a country’s “fair share” range and are not at all consistent with holding warming to below 2°C let alone with the Paris Agreement’s stronger 1.5°C limit. If all government NDCs were in this range, warming would reach between 3°C and 4°C. For sectors, the rating indicates that the target is consistent with warming between 3°C and 4°C if all other sectors were to follow the same approach.

Insufficient< 3°C World

NDCs with this rating are in the least stringent part of a country’s “fair share” range and not consistent with holding warming below 2°C let alone with the Paris Agreement’s stronger 1.5°C limit. If all government NDCs were in this range, warming would reach over 2°C and up to 3°C. For sectors, the rating indicates that the target is consistent with warming over 2°C and up to 3°C if all other sectors were to follow the same approach.

2°C Compatible< 2°C World

NDCs with this rating are consistent with the 2009 Copenhagen 2°C goal and therefore fall within a country’s “fair share” range, but are not fully consistent with the Paris Agreement long term temperature goal. If all government NDCs were in this range, warming could be held below, but not well below, 2°C and still be too high to be consistent with the Paris Agreement 1.5°C limit. For sectors, the rating indicates that the target is consistent with holding warming below, but not well below, 2°C if all other sectors were to follow the same approach.

1.5°C Paris Agreement Compatible< 1.5°C World

This rating indicates that a government’s NDCs in the most stringent part of its “fair share” range: it is consistent with the Paris Agreement’s 1.5°C limit. For sectors, the rating indicates that the target is consistent with the Paris Agreement’s 1.5°C limit.

Role model<< 1.5°C World

This rating indicates that a government’s NDC is more ambitious than what is considered a “fair” contribution: it is more than consistent with the Paris Agreement’s 1.5°C limit. No “role model” rating has been developed for the sectors.

1.5°C Compatible< 1.5°C World

Historical emissions

Historical emissions are taken from the official inventory data on greenhouse gas emissions in Germany for the years 1990-2018, published by the Federal Environment Agency in January 2020 and submitted to the UNFCCC in March 2020.

Current policy projections

The current policy projections are based on two scenarios: one based on an update of the projection report (“Projektionsbericht”) published by the Federal Environment Agency in March 2020, which includes all measures that were agreed by 29 January 2020 including those of the Climate Action Programme (German Federal Environment Agency, 2020). The other scenario published on behalf of the German Ministry for Economic Affairs and Energy (BMWi) in March 2020 also quantifies the measures included in the Climate Action Programme (Kemmler et al., 2020). The figures were harmonized to the latest inventory historical data.

COVID-19 impact

To reflect the emissions reduction resulting from the COVID-19 pandemic, we then applied a novel method to estimate the COVID-19 related dip in greenhouse gas emissions in 2020 and the deployment through to 2030. The uncertainty surrounding the severity and length of the pandemic creates a new level of uncertainty for current and future greenhouse gas emissions. We first update the current policy projections using most recent projections, as outlined above. We then distil the emission intensity (GHG emissions/GDP) from this pre-pandemic scenario and apply to it the most recent GDP projections that consider the effect of the pandemic. To capture a wide range of possible future GDP developments, we usually use more than one GDP projection. For Germany we consider the projections from IMF, German Federal Bank and the double-hit scenario from OECD to reflect the full range of potential impacts (last updated: June 2020). If the most recent GDP projections only provide values for the next few years, we use the GDP growth until 2030 that was used as a basis for the original pre-pandemic current policy scenario.

Global Warming Potential values

The CAT uses Global Warming Potential (GWP) values from the IPCC's Fourth Assessment Report (AR4) for all its figures and time series. Assessments completed prior to December 2018 (COP24) used GWP values from the Second Assessment Report (SAR).