2% why should Germany even care?

The other day, a good friend of mine challenged me during a discussion we had about building a carbon free economy. He asked: “Does it really make sense to burden our companies with sustainability and greenhouse gas (GHG) emission pricing, if the lever we have in Germany makes only 2% of the global GHG emissions?”

That question hit me hard. I’ve long believed that we need to create a future worth living for our children and our grandchildren, in other words to become #enkelf?hig. To me, it simply seemed the right thing to do – but my friend made me understand that not everyone would be satisfied by a purely ethical answer to the “2% question”. Another discussion shortly after with another top manager and member of several supervisory boards took a similar direction, asking what are the big levers that we should really focus on and therefore if the German GHG emissions really mattered…

…both of them were right, from their personal perspective. Realising that kept me awake and I tried to step back a little and better understand for myself why it is still necessary to convince people and businesses in Germany and Europe that we need to create a carbon free economy.

In the end I started to research a little and tried to get my head around this question and I did find some reasonable answers for myself, but hopefully also for other people as well.

The economic reasons

Looking at the details I am sure that it would simply be a huge mistake and a lost chance if the German industry would not push towards global CO2 pricing and use its innovative power and engineering skills to not only reduce its GHG footprint for cost reasons, but also build the technologies to reduce GHG emissions worldwide.

Germany never really caught up to become a digital tech leader. Industries like cloud services or AI are booming in the United States, China, Israel. But next to its capabilities in Industrial IoT, where I still think we have and will have a leading role. This is our chance to become a world cleantech leader and thereby outperform by doing good. We need to understand sustainability as an opportunity for future business.

But even if this does not apply for all industries, if other countries do accept their responsibility to dramatically reduce GHG emissions they will demand us to deliver products and services with little or no GHG emissions in order to reach their own targets. If we fail to deliver these demands, then our global leading export position and the foundation of our economy will be jeopardised, as it will be no longer competitive in a more and more carbon free global marketplace.

There is no way our economy will be able to flourish and keep its strong market positions if we do not invest in a carbon free economy. We thereby not only need the guiding regulations, such as carbon pricing, but also the demand in our own country to push investments into the right direction and develop the necessary technologies. There will be many growing playing fields, such as EV development, battery technologies, hydrogen production and related industries, eFuels, carbon removal and capture, wind, solar, heat pumps and many more. But if we do not develop them in our own country then others will, and will thereby benefit from the related growth opportunities, while we will have a hard time.

However, what our industries need is a crystal clear path towards a carbon free economy with sufficient planning security, so that companies can make reasonable investments. The great companies will see the opportunities created not the burden in that transformation and will position themselves to become global market leaders, as they already did in the past in many different industries, #deutscherMittelstand.

The lever reasons

Obviously, you could break down the global CO2 emissions into single countries or why not even into single regions. If you do, Nordrhein-Westfalen (the state I live in) only contributes 0.69% to global emissions, and by the way I would contribute only 0.00000009% to global emissions myself, roughly. With such a small lever, why should I care?

I should care, because this is a global problem and we are all part of that 100%, because for greenhouse gases there are no borders or isolated chambers we live in, in which we only need to handle our own emissions. We are part of the EU, which contributes nearly 10% to global emissions, pretty close to the United States (14%), a country that we usually call out as one of the biggest GHG producers. Germany alone already produces one fifth of the EU’s emissions which gives us a big responsibility, because we do not only influence our own but the EU’s emission targets. And if we like it or not we are still the sixth biggest absolute GHG contributor in the world.

However, even that discussion might be arguable, but let’s talk about the lever we have as individuals. According to the EU we have a bigger individual lever in Germany (9.0 t per capita) than people in countries that lead the list of GHG emitters like China (8.0 t) and India (1.9 t). Only the USA, Russia and Japan have higher per capita and absolute emissions than Germany.

The average per capita emission globally is 4.82 t per year. This means that we as German individuals emit twice as much as the average citizen on this planet and therefore have a much bigger lever than most of the other people on this planet. We can therefore not only make a bigger difference than most other people, but we therefore even have a bigger responsibility than most other countries in the world.

The ethical reasons

I truly believe that we cannot hope that other countries and people take care of our emissions. How should that work? How are we supposed to convince countries like China, the United States, India to not only reduce their emissions to zero but become even negative, to remove our 2% as well? Come on it is only 2%, only a few 750 Mio.t. a year!

On top of that, how should we make sure that advancing countries and continents, such as Africa do not proclaim their right for emissions, if we who emitted GHG over decades, not even reduce our current emissions, which per capita are higher than any of the African countries. Taken all GHG emissions since the mid 1800 Germany has contributed 5% to the worlds GHG emissions, which is the 4th biggest amount of all countries in the world.

So, if we do not lead by example nobody will follow, which ultimately will lead to zero reduction. The consequences would not only be devastating from an economical perspective but might even lead to more severe consequences to everyone on this planet… that’s not what I have in mind when I talk about becoming enkelf?hig.

Germany is a well-respected member of the international community, it is one of the strongest and biggest industrial countries, taking part in the most important international treaties and discussion rounds. We are a leading example for many other nations and not only should but must use this role to influence others to contribute to a future worth living for us, our children, and future generations.

What we need is an enkelf?hig attitude

The latest flooding events in Germany and other countries have shown that climate change is not only real, it kills people and it will be extremely costly for all of us. We need a different attitude if we want to change that and we also need to see the opportunity in the required transformation. We need to create an #enkelf?hig attitude. This means that we live and work in a balance between economy, ecology and our social responsibility. We need to prove that we can be outperforming because and not although we work and act sustainably.

But we need help, also from our governments and politicians. What we need is less bureaucracy and strong support to create a high degree of innovation for sustainable technologies and business models. We need a guiding framework, such as CO2 pricing, people that take responsibility and a clear roadmap that gives us security in planning.

We have seen in the pandemic that we are able to develop solutions quickly and aside all the negatives we have come through this pandemic stronger than expected, so far. Let’s use the momentum to be quick, innovative and bold in order to develop a carbon free economy.

?Be bold, be #enkelf?hig!

Some additional Facts

• Global emissions (2019): 37 bn.t
• Capita globally (2020): 7,674 bn.
• Average per capita emissions globally: 4,82 t
• Emissions Germany (2019): 750 Mio.t
• Capita Germany (2020): 83 mio.
• Average per capita emissions Germany: 9,00 t

While researching I read several articles that argued in a similar way, and I would like to link them here as well:

• Behauptung: ?Deutschland verursacht nur rund zwei Prozent des weltweiten CO2-Aussto?es. Was wir tun, ist deshalb praktisch irrelevant.“ | klimafakten.de
• Was bringt es, wenn Deutschland CO2 reduziert? - quarks.de
• CO2-Aussto? der L?nder | co2online
• Liste der gr??ten Kohlenstoffdioxidemittenten – Wikipedia
• Was bedeutet es, wenn die Weltbev?lkerung w?chst? (dsw.org)