We call for improvements to the National Energy and Climate Plan

Germany is currently updating its National Energy and Climate Plan (NECP) for 2030. This plan records all measures to achieve the national climate targets. However, politicians do not carry out its development alone as it is also a process in which citizens and civil society participate.

In this short video, Sylwia Andralojc-Bodych and Charly Heberer from Germanwatch explain the potentialof NECP improvement to achieve the climate targets in Germany.

More about the NECP

The National Energy and Climate Plan (NECP) is an important tool through which EU member states define the necessary policies and measures to achieve their 2030 energy and climate targets. These measures contain the promotion of renewable energy, energy efficiency and energy saving. Citizens and civil society participate in its development.

In order to account for significant changing circumstances, especially progress in EU climate and energy policies, the NECPs are updated once in a ten-year period. Currently, the NECP revision process is underway and Germany must finally submit an update to its national energy and climate plan by June 2024.

Germanwatch demands:

The revision of the National Energy and Climate Plans is also the right opportunity to accelerate climate action. In recent months, Germany rapidly accelerated the deployment of renewable energy, but it still did not unlock its full potential. Germanwatch demands to speed up expansion, create enabling conditions for tenant electricity and energy sharing. Germany finally needs a transport policy that is aligned with climate targets. The company car privilege for internal combustion engines needs to be dropped and the focus must be on rail instead of new road construction. Germany has made rapid progress in expanding renewable energies, but has still not exploited their full potential.

We urge the German government to include these effective measures in the German NECP and to exclude those, which we as civil society consider problematic.

Climate and environment NGOs based in twelve European countries gathered almost one hundred concrete examples of climate action measures implemented on the ground. These should inspire all governments on how to accelerate the European green transition.