In the Paris Climate Agreement, all signatory states committed to limiting global warming to well below two degrees Celsius. A prerequisite for this is net-zero greenhouse gas emission by the second half of this century. To achieve this goal, the countries are all required to develop a national long-term climate strategy and to establish and publish Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) every five years. More than 140 states have already complied in this task. The Federal Republic of Germany, for example, has committed to becoming greenhouse gas neutral by the year 2045. This commitment will be facilitated by the Climate Change Act, amended in June 2021, which imposes mandatory emission caps on the energy sector, industry, agriculture, transport and buildings. By the year 2030, according to the plan, German greenhouse gas emissions will be reduced by 65 per cent compared to the year 1990.
However, Germany and many other countries are lagging behind in the implementation of their self-imposed climate targets. Progress in the fight against climate change is still moving at a snail’s pace worldwide.
Based on the current climate protection laws and catalogues of measures, experts are projecting global warming of two to 3.6 degrees Celsius by the year 2100. More commitment, political will and investment in climate action are therefore vital. According to the International Energy Agency (IEA), in the year 2022 almost 89 per cent of the record-high global carbon dioxide emissions in the energy sector were still attributable to the burning of fossil raw materials and the accompanying industrial processes (production, processing). This confirms that humanity is still firmly entrenched in the fossil age.

fig. 1.27 > Experts at the Climate Action Tracker regularly analyse international climate policies and, based on climate action taken and pledged by all countries, calculate how much warming the planet is approaching by the year 2100. In November 2022, the measures implemented up to that point indicated a warming of 2.2 to 3.4 degrees Celsius.