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Germany has achieved major gains with its coal phase-out, an objective that was originally set for 2038 but has been moved forward to 2030. This, combined with the commitment to end nuclear power generation by 2022, has resulted in major government investment in renewables – boosted again with Germany’s recent decision to halt certification of the Nord Stream 2 pipeline and wean itself off Russian fossil fuels.

The new federal minister of climate action (and the vice-chancellor), Green Party member Robert Habeck, is currently revising the Renewable Energy Sources Act Law with an aim to significantly expand renewable energy production; solar capacity is slated to increase by more than threefold, and wind power will more than double by 2030. For the first time, the federal government is offering financial support for farmers willing to install solar panels on their land. The government is also raising solar subsidy rates and requiring all new industrial buildings to host solar panels. Meanwhile, Germany’s 16 federal states are being compelled to allocate 2% of their surface area to wind power installations. The government aspires to an 80% renewable grid by 2030, 100% by 2035.

Since the Russian invasion of Ukraine, climate goals are inextricably tied to energy sovereignty, with Finance Minister Christian Lindner now referring to renewables as “Freiheitsenergie” (freedom energy). He has announced a $200-billion investment in industrial transformation that will expand the electric vehicle charging network (100,000 stations to be added annually), boost hydrogen technology and fill the fiscal hole that will result from the removal of the renewable energy surcharge (which has been added to consumers’ electricity bills since 2000).

Energy efficiency is also a key piece of the net-zero puzzle. Germany is working to reduce total energy consumption by 20 to 25% of current levels by 2030. A major focus here is on the country’s buildings, the majority of which were built before 1977, when thermal insulation requirements were introduced, and are still heated with oil or gas. Buildings currently account for 16% of Germany’s CO2 emissions.

In concert with the EU, which recently raised the standards of its Energy Performance of Buildings Directive in a bid to achieve carbon neutrality in Europe’s building stock by 2050, Germany is further raising the bar on energy efficiency requirements for buildings in legislation expected to pass in 2023. An incentive program run through Germany’s state-owned development bank calibrates subsidies, grants and interest rates for building and renovation projects to their energy efficiency.

While Germany’s 2019 Earth Index score of 136% (which is consistent with the previous three-year trend) suggests that the country is well on its way to net-zero, the current government’s attitude is anything but complacent. At his first press conference as minister, Habeck summarized the country’s climate performance thus: “We’re not standing on the starting line here; we’re way behind.”
He says the pace of change has to accelerate by a factor of three in order to reach the 2030 targets; while emissions sunk by an average of 15 megatonnes per year between 2010 and 2020, annual reductions will have to reach at least 40 megatonnes in this decade.

The hitch: while Russia’s invasion of Ukraine should accelerate Germany’s renewable energy plans, Habeck also announced the creation of strategic coal reserves in an effort to reduce Germany’s dependence on Russian gas. As well, the country is building two new port terminals for liquefied natural gas.

Naomi Buck is a Toronto-based writer. She lived in Berlin for 12 years, working for Canadian and German media.

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The French consume more dairy products per capita than anyone else on Earth, and their dairy sector represented 7% of the country’s greenhouse gas emissions in 2017. Decarbonizing agriculture means overhauling a massive industry. Six different “low-carbon” food labels have been launched to certify projects that sequester or avoid agricultural emissions, including “ferme laitière bas carbone” (low-carbon dairy farm).

Fortunately, other sectors are less challenging. France’s nuclear-heavy power sector is ahead of schedule in decarbonization (though it controversially kept two remaining coal plants open through the winter), and in February, President Emmanuel Macron announced a 10-fold increase in renewable energy to 2050, as well as plans for a “nuclear renaissance.”

France’s aging buildings, most of them erected before the Second World War, have an enormous potential to slash emissions by switching from gas to electric heat pumps and district heating, particularly with a decarbonized power sector. The country has good plans for this, including large renovation subsidies and one-stop retrofit shops, says Adeline Rochet of climate-change think tank E3G. “But it will take a few years to see results.” Reticent homeowners should be spurred to renovate by recent energy price hikes. Those higher energy costs should also accelerate industrial-sector efforts to decarbonize.

In 2019, France was just below the EU average for recycling municipal waste. But in early 2020, three ambitious new 2025 targets were announced that should speed up the sector’s emission reductions: 20% reduction in single-use plastics, 100% recycling of plastic packaging and 100% removal of “useless” plastic packaging such as blister packs around batteries. Longer-term, all single-use plastics should be phased out by 2040.

Despite its world-famous electric high-speed trains, France’s transport emissions are proving more difficult to move. Electric cars have boomed in the last couple of years, which will help, but it will not be enough to overcome decades of building car-dependent sprawl. More promisingly, a green wave of municipal leaders was elected in 2020, pushing a pro-cycling agenda inspired by Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo. Freight emissions remain difficult to move, as almost everything travels on diesel trucks.

“There are some powerful lobbies, deeply rooted in national identity in some cases, that make it difficult to achieve targets in transport and agriculture,” says Rochet. She adds that decreasing single-passenger cars and meat-based diets can go a long way, but public resistance to change is likely. “France has clearly engaged in the transition over the past few years, but it is still not up to the challenge, especially with higher EU emissions reductions targets.”

Adrian Hiel is a Canadian writer who has spent the last 18 years in Brussels.

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It also helps greatly that the country’s climate policies are underpinned by the world’s first climate change law, introduced in 2008, and a Climate Change Committee (CCC) that holds the government to account on its targets and progress in reducing greenhouse gas emissions.

The U.K. aims to cut its emissions by 68% below 2013 levels by 2030, and currently it is 43% of the way toward achieving that target. To reach the 2030 goal, it needs to cut around 18,000 kilotonnes a year. In 2019, emissions fell by 13,566 kilotonnes, giving the country a 75% Earth Index score, according to new Corporate Knights report. Though the pace of cuts has accelerated.

The heavy lifting has come to date from the power sector, which has an Earth Index score of 330%. “The U.K. has made a concerted effort over the past decade to retire its coal capacity and replace it with low carbon power generation – principally wind (onshore and increasingly offshore),” says the CCC.

The pace of reductions in the power sector will inevitably slow, as coal has been almost completely removed from the energy mix, although the grid will continue to decarbonize as more renewables come onto the network – particularly offshore wind, where the U.K. is one of the leading markets globally and where costs have come down considerably in recent years.

Policy inconsistencies have meant that other sectors have been notably less successful to date in cutting emissions. The reversal of policies to encourage carbon capture and storage and more efficient buildings were particularly damaging for fossil fuels (which scores 26% in the index) and buildings (36%). The worst-performing sectors were waste, with a score of just 14%, and agriculture, with a score of –13%. Deep reductions in agriculture will happen only if the U.K. introduces “actions to change farming practices and consumer behaviour to release agricultural land for uses that reduce emissions and sequester carbon,” the CCC says via email.

With emission reductions well under way in the power sector, other sectors will have to play a bigger role in future, particularly industry, buildings and transport.

The U.K.’s net-zero strategy should provide a framework for whole-economy decarbonization, but it needs to be backed up by credible plans, according to the House of Lords. The U.K. carbon market will help to hasten the switch from fossil fuels to low-carbon sources, but in the short-term, the biggest contribution is set to come from transport, where emissions in 2019 fell at less than half the rate required (46%).

Progress is expected to accelerate after the government brought forward its plans to phase out the sale of petrol and diesel cars to 2030, from its original target of 2040, and although EV sales are rising fast, much still needs to be done to install new charging infrastructure.

The U.K. has made significant progress in decarbonizing its power sector, mainly by moving away from coal power to renewable sources. It now needs to do the same in other parts of the economy.

There is still a huge amount of work to do. The dangers of falling behind are illustrated by Prime Minister Boris Johnson reportedly calling for a temporary “climate change pass” for the gas industry in March, to allow the West to wean itself off Russian gas supplies. Others are calling for the U.K. to increase its offshore wind ambitions to bolster its energy security.

Mike Scott writes about business, finance, clean energy and sustainability.

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As global temperatures continue to climb, the increase in climate extremes is pushing nature and humans “beyond their ability to adapt,” the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) warned in its late-February report. “Any further delay in concerted global action will miss a brief and rapidly closing window to secure a liveable future,” said Hans-Otto Pörtner, one of the report’s co-authors.

Climate breakdown is already causing dangerous and widespread disruption in nature and affecting the lives of billions of people. Impacts include deadly heat waves and other threats to human well-being, ocean acidification and significant species loss.

“Half measures are no longer an option,” said IPCC chair Hoesung Lee.

If the world stands a chance of blunting the worst effects of the climate emergency, its largest economies must move to quickly transition away from burning fossil fuels. And the wealthiest countries must lead the way.

A new Corporate Knights analysis and accountability tool, Earth Index, has revealed that G20 countries, responsible for about 75% of global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, remain far off track from meeting their climate targets.

From 2016 to 2019, none of the 10 developed countries that are members of the Group of 20 nations managed to reduce emissions at a rate consistent with their 2030 targets, the index shows.

In 2019, only Germany and Turkey hit their marks. Canada was the worst performer of the developed countries. Its performance was second last to Russia – also a large oil and gas producer – between 2016 and 2019.

Corporate Knights is launching the Earth Index initiative to gauge whether G20 countries are living up to their decarbonization commitments. “We are not on track to meet these targets,” says Ralph Torrie, Corporate Knights director of research. “And for most countries, it’s not even close.”

Half measures are no longer an option.

–IPCC chair Hoesung Lee

In addition to the 10 developed countries, Earth Index monitors nine newly developed or developing countries that are members of the G20 but have different reporting requirements than the Annex 1 nations (which are developed countries and “economies in transition”) under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). They include China, India, Brazil, Mexico and Indonesia, and have a mixture of 2030 targets and net-zero goals for 2050 and beyond. Of the nine, only Argentina made enough progress in 2019 to be consistent with its nationally determined goals.

Organizations such as the International Energy Agency and the non-profit Climate Action Tracker initiative have concluded that targets announced last year at COP26, the UN’s climate summit in Glasgow, are insufficient to meet the goal of limiting the rise in average global temperatures to 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels.

Earth Index adds to this analysis by assessing the “say–do” gap – the shortfall between what countries say they will achieve and what progress they are making toward those goals. “Along with targets that are fit for purpose, we need radical action to meet those targets,” says Corporate Knights co-founder Toby Heaps.

Time is running out for governments to get on the right track, says Rick Smith, chief executive officer at the Canadian Institute for Climate Choices. “There are only nine years to 2030 … we have a very short period of time to accomplish some significant changes.” Only in the past couple of years have key pieces begun to fall into place that will enable major emitters to meet their targets, Smith says. That includes the European Green Deal, a renewed commitment from the Biden administration to tackle emissions, and Canada’s own Net-Zero Emissions Accountability Act.

The urgency of the transition was reinforced when energy powerhouse Russia invaded Ukraine at the end of February, plunging commodity markets into crisis and driving oil and gas prices skyward. Fossil fuel producers like Canada and the United States faced calls to increase production to offset falling Russian supplies. European governments are embracing an urgent mixture of conservation and efficiency measures, switching from Russian oil and gas to renewables, looking to other global sources, and in some cases, extending the life of coal and nuclear plants.

Corporate Knights plans to publish the index annually with the intention of holding countries accountable for delivering on their commitments. While a one-year snapshot provides a limited picture in the first year, it will provide key data on the trend line over the coming decade, shining a spotlight on gaps both between countries and within them.

The inaugural Earth Index also allows users to survey national performance over four years between 2016 and 2019, the last year for which reliable data is available. It provides data for key sectors – power, the fossil fuel industry, transportation, industry, buildings, agriculture and waste. It does not include emissions from land use, land use change and forestry, which countries such as Canada rely on for significant emission reductions.

Along with targets that are fit for purpose, we need radical action to meet those targets.

–Corporate Knights co-founder Toby Heaps

For targets, Corporate Knights is using the nationally determined contributions (NDCs) that countries submitted under the UNFCCC process last year ahead of COP26. Corporate Knights will adjust the index if countries come forward with more ambitious targets in future years.

Among the Annex 1 nations, Germany is by far the leader. In 2019, it reduced GHG emissions by 62% above what would be needed at an annual rate to achieve its target of 65% below 1990 levels by 2030. However, even Germany has ground to make up. From 2016 to 2019, it fell 15% short of the reductions needed to be on track, and preliminary 2021 data suggest it continues to fall behind. Recently, Germany announced it would spend €200 billion in an effort to eliminate dependence on Russian gas, but that doesn’t mean it’s shifting away from fossil fuels altogether anytime soon.

The EU also achieved more emission reductions in 2019 than its annualized target requires but made only half the cuts needed between 2016 and 2019 to be on pace.

The United States is the world’s second-largest emitter after China, and, despite former president Donald Trump’s open hostility toward climate policies, the country did make progress in 2019.

Driven by the power sector, the U.S. achieved 42% of the GHG reductions that were needed on an annualized basis to reach the 2030 target adopted last year by President Joe Biden.

U.S. emissions rose in the fossil fuel, industry, buildings and agriculture sectors. However, the power sector – which accounts for a quarter of the total – saw GHGs fall by nearly 10% as natural gas and renewable electricity replaced coal.

In Canada, by contrast, rising emissions in transportation, buildings and agriculture offset improvements in the power sector and resulted in a small increase in total emissions in 2019.

From 2016 to 2019, Japan and the European G20 members saw emission reductions, while Canada, the United States, Australia, Russia and Turkey increased GHG output. None of the 10 were on schedule to meet the target they adopted in 2021.

“When countries announce long-term goals but neglect the steps required to achieve them, trust plummets, alongside the likelihood that these long-term goals will ever be achieved,” says Heaps. Bending the climate trajectory will take monumental effort from governments and corporations, he adds. “Every person in every country and every sector must play a role, be willing to make compromises, and be willing to take bold action like never before to put the world on a fast track to a low-carbon economy.”

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As global carbon emissions reached an all-time high, again, in 2019, the U.S. power sector offered the country’s sole glimmer of hope for hitting its climate targets. The rest of the economy released more greenhouse gas rather than less, except for the transportation sector, which cleaned up slightly.

Even that limited progress on clean electricity is perhaps surprising, given that the most recent dataset from a Corporate Knights’ Earth Index report comes from well into the presidency of Donald Trump, who rejected the Paris Agreement and vowed to revitalize coal power. But the president wields limited direct influence over a decentralized power industry. Coal plants kept closing, while renewables hit their stride.

Much has changed since 2019. President Joe Biden ran and won on a clean energy platform. He hasn’t yet been able to pass sweeping climate legislation, but he did declare that by 2030, U.S. emissions would fall as much as 52% from 2005 levels. That’s the goal the Earth Index tracks.

To succeed in less than nine remaining years, the U.S. must double down on clean electricity and convert it into emission reductions elsewhere, by electrifying transportation, buildings and some industrial processes.

Luckily for this effort, renewables have passed an inflection point in economic competitiveness: nearly half of new power plant capacity built in 2022 will be solar, according to federal data. Record numbers of battery plants are getting built to store solar power for nocturnal use. Overall, 79% of new capacity in 2022 will be non-fossil based. Nearly every major utility company pledged to reach net-zero emissions by mid-century. But modelling suggests that, without a federal push to close dirty plants and open more clean ones, the U.S. will fall short of its 2030 goal.

With power emissions falling, transportation is now the largest-emitting sector at 29% of U.S. emissions in 2019. The pathway there is fairly straightforward: build more chargers, electrify government and corporate fleets, and mass consumer adoption will follow as prices come down and options increase.

Electric vehicles trickled into the market in 2019. In 2021, they doubled market share to 4.5%, according to the International Energy Agency. That trend is set to keep growing, as electric offerings proliferate and classic brands like Ford’s F-150 pickup truck and Chevy’s Silverado launch battery-powered models.

Democrats failed to pass Build Back Better legislation, which included $500 billion to accelerate decarbonization. But last year’s infrastructure law directs billions of dollars to public charging networks, to give drivers more options to replenish their batteries around town or on highway corridors. Biden wants half of U.S. new car sales to be electric by 2030.

“The President’s Bipartisan Infrastructure Law will help us win the EV race by working with states, labor, and the private sector to deploy a historic nationwide charging network that will make EV charging accessible for more Americans,” Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg said in a statement.

Long-distance trucking will likely need different technologies like hydrogen fuel cells, but electric can work for five million shorter routes in North America, based on industry testing.

Heavy industry looks more daunting. Few low-carbon options are commercially ready for energy-intensive processes like making steel, glass, cement and fertilizer. But steelmakers are already building factories for “green steel,” using cleanly produced hydrogen and electric furnaces. The issue isn’t so much inventing new technologies as scaling them to compete with conventional, carbon-emitting ones.

The agriculture and waste sectors are early in their decarbonization process and haven’t drawn much focus in national policy debates.

Another stubborn area: there’s an estimated 65 million existing homes that would need to switch from burning gas to all-electric.

A clean grid can’t halve national emissions by itself. Success by 2030 depends on how quickly other sectors tap into the transition to clean electricity.

Julian Spector is a senior reporter at Canary Media, a U.S.-based non-profit newsroom chronicling decarbonization.

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Among the 10 most developed G20 countries assessed by Corporate Knights’ Earth Index analysis , “Canada was the worst performing country of the whole group in 2019,” said Ralph Torrie, Corporate Knights’ director of research. And Canada’s performance between 2016 and 2019 was second worst to Russia in terms of making the emission reductions needed to meet its own targets.

The index compares a country’s actual emission performance against the annual average reductions that would be needed to meet its 2030 goal. For 2019, Canada saw emissions decrease by 2 megatonnes (Mt) while it required a reduction of 30 Mt to be on pace for a 45% target in 2030.

After years of limited action by the previous Conservative government, the Liberals came to power in 2015 pledging to ramp up climate ambition. However,they didn’t implement the centrepiece of their climate strategy, economy-wide carbon pricing, until 2019, and it was so low it had little impact on demand for carbon-intensive energy. The price rose by $10 annually to hit $50 a tonne this year, and it will increase to $170 a tonne by 2030.

In 2019, none of the seven sectors tracked by the Earth Index achieved sufficient emissions reductions to be on track for their share of the 2030 target. Only the power sector and agriculture saw any decline that year. The agriculture sector has seen emissions flatline since 2005, but a small GHG reduction in 2019 nudged it in the right direction. Canada’s move away from coal and support for renewables resulted in continued emission reductions. However, more needs to be done.

In an emailed statement, Environment Minister Stephen Guilbeault said Canada has “one of the most difficult to achieve 2030 targets in the G20” given that we have a heavy economic reliance on the oil and gas industry. He said the Liberal government is “making up for lost time” given the previous government’s inaction.

“Canada is bending its greenhouse gas emissions curve,” he said. He pointed to the fact that the Liberals established one of the world’s first comprehensive carbon pricing regimes, its requirement for phasing out coal-fired plants by 2030, and its investments in clean technology.

In March, Canada faced calls to rev up its oil and gas production to help reduce demand for Russian supplies after NATO allies imposed sanctions over the invasion of Ukraine. While there is marginal excess pipeline and rail export capacity to the United States, Guilbeault told reporters that Canada cannot realistically provide Europe with significant volumes. Instead, he said that Canada is looking at ways to increase exports of renewable energy such as hydrogen. “This is where Canada can really help.”

The government released a detailed emission reduction plan in late March that aims to meet its 2030 target through a series of measures aimed at oil and gas, transportation, buildings, industry and agriculture.

The April budget allocated an additional $12.5 billion over several years to fight climate change on top of what the government had provided previously. However, the policy is still largely an incremental one as opposed to the dramatic “build back better” strategy that many groups had championed.

This year will likely be a pivotal one, as the federal government plans to finalize a low-carbon fuel standard, regulate deep reductions in methane emissions from oil and gas and then set a declining GHG cap for the industry, said Rick Smith, CEO at the Canadian Climate Institute.

However, Ottawa – and the provinces – need to make deeper investments in retrofits to drive down emissions in the building sector, and tackle transportation emissions through tougher mileage standards and greater adoption of zero emission vehicles.

This was “the first opportunity for the federal government to lay out a comprehensive, detailed road map [to] get us to net-zero,” Smith said. “So 2022 is a critical year.”

Editor’s note, April 21, 2022: A previous version of this story said that in 2019, Canada saw emissions increase by 1.8 megatonnes (Mt) while it required a reduction of 29 Mt to be on pace for a 45% target in 2030. However, the federal government released an inventory report in April and updated its 2019 emissions to reflect a change in United Nations’ methodology. These new figures showed a slight decline from 2018 and also showed emissions fell by 66 Mt in 2020, largely as the result of pandemic-related lockdowns.

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