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Germany achieved its climate target last year. That means the country as a whole doesn’t have any more Greenhouse gases expelled than it had planned for this period. However, the decline in emissions was smaller than in the previous year. The Agora Energiewende think tank came to this conclusion in a recent study.
Accordingly, Germany will have around 640 million tons in 2025 Greenhouse gases expelled. In order to make the effects of the different gases comparable, they are combined into a common unit of measurement.
Compared to 2024, emissions have fallen by 1.5 percent. This represents less than half of the savings from the previous year.
“Germany is losing pace when it comes to climate protection,” said director Julia Bläsius. This puts the climate targets for 2030 at risk, writes Agora Energiewende. By then, emissions of climate-damaging gases should actually fall by 65 percent compared to 1990. In order to meet this goal, an average of 36 million tons of CO₂ would have to be saved starting this year, four times as much as last year, the think tank calculates.
As in previous years, the poor economic situation is largely responsible for the lower CO₂ emissions, they say Experts firmly. Energy-intensive industries in particular are producing less, and the export-oriented German economy is suffering from the trade policies of the USA and China.
Buildings and transport are making little progress in climate protection
As in previous years, climate protection in the building and transport sectors has only improved slightly in 2025. In both areas, CO₂ emissions have actually increased, experts report. One reason for this was the cold start to the year: This meant that more oil and gas were used for heating. Overall, emissions increased by three million tons of CO₂, 1.4 percent more than in 2024.
Data for the entire year 2025 is not already available in all areas. Agora Energiewende therefore sometimes uses projections.
According to initial calculations, Germany will be the European one Climate requirements therefore miss the target by around 30 million tonnes of CO₂. If nothing changes, the federal government would have to implement additional measures by 2030 Pollution rights buy from other countries. These could cost the state up to 34 billion euros.
Renewable energy delivers
A positive factor was the increase in electricity generation from renewable energies by around two percent. This increase is primarily due to solar energy. In the particularly sunny year of 2025, more electricity was generated using solar systems than ever before.
In addition, many new solar systems were built: together they have an additional output of 17.5 gigawatts. This made photovoltaics the second most important source of electricity in Germany for the first time – meaning it supplied more electricity than gas and coal-fired power plants. According to the study, most of the electricity was generated from wind turbines.
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