2030 climate protection target for transport not achievable after government decision

UFOP: Challenge in the vehicle fleet requires sustainable fuel and balanced funding strategy

Berlin, 26.04.2024. The German oilseed producer association, Union zur Förderung von Oel- und Proteinpflanzen e. V. (UFOP), has criticised the agreement reached by the governing coalition on the Climate Protection Act as not expedient in view of the urgent measures needed to meet the statutory climate protection targets in the transport sector. Against the backdrop of the review report published by the Expert Council for Climate Issues on the calculation of German greenhouse gas emissions for 2023, the association is once again calling for a holistic strategy to decarbonise the transport sector.

UFOP notes that biofuels are already making a significant contribution to climate protection in the transport sector with around 11.5 million tonnes of CO2 equivalent annually. However, this contribution is limited by capping limits for sustainably certified biofuels from cultivated biomass and the use of certain residual and waste materials in volume. The association takes the current coalition agreement as an opportunity to illustrate the enormous challenge posed by the physical amount of energy that is currently largely covered by fossil diesel fuel based on fuel consumption for the years 2013-2023.

This demand for energy requires a comprehensive and complementary strategic approach, which in the opinion of the UFOP must be discussed and realised in a differentiated manner - in accordance with the respective short to medium-term actual contribution to climate protection. For this reason, the fact that more than 40 million vehicles with combustion engines will still be registered after 2030 must be taken into account in particular.

Although electrification has an important role to play in the change of drive system, the limits of physics for the required drive power and the opportunity costs in light of the abolition of the environmental bonus must also be taken into account. Consequently, the focus should be on subsidy policy framework conditions that make the switch attractive due to the calculation of operating costs. This applies not only to the necessary socio-political balance of CO₂ pricing, but also to tax incentives for low-greenhouse gas drives and fuels. In view of the forthcoming European elections and the new appointment of the EU Commission, UFOP is therefore calling for swift consultation and decision-making on the Energy Tax Directive. 

At a national level, UFOP expects the federal government to draft a national biomass strategy that creates prospects for agriculture and forestry and thus also for national value creation, taking into account the diverse options of the various forms of biomass as energy carriers and sources. In principle, a strategy should be geared towards achieving set targets by consensus wherever possible. UFOP is therefore calling for a consensual discussion process when the Federal Government presents its report on the further development of the Federal Emissions Control Act and the evaluation of the greenhouse quota obligation to the German Parliament (Deutscher Bundestag) in the near future. UFOP emphasises the international exemplary function of this legal regulation to place greenhouse gas efficiency at the centre of competition as a technology- and raw material-open approach by means of a CO2-linked penalty payment. The associated GHG quota trading also creates additional added value for producers and users, particularly in the area of e-mobility.

In this context, UFOP emphasises that the climate protection target in the transport sector also requires other instruments, such as shifting freight transport to rail and a more ambitious expansion of local public transport, particularly in rural areas.