#net zero commitments

The car is perhaps the closest thing Germany has to a national symbol. For this reason, the success of the auto industry and the happiness of motorists has long been a barometer for the standing of the Federal Republic. Since the beginning of the war on Iran, German news has been filled with stories about drivers. Journalists have filed breathless dispatches from petrol stations all over the country, reporting scenes of anger and frustration at the hike in fuel prices. The anger is understandable. Diesel rose briefly to over €2.40 (£2.08) a litre, a more than 50% increase on the price a year ago. Because the effects of the war have been quickly felt in the form of inflation, the crisis in the strait of Hormuz has revealed just how fragile the European economy is – although it is not the first time Europeans have been forced to learn the lesson of their energy dependency. Between 2020 and 2024, Covid, the obstruction of the Suez canal by the Ever Given container ship, Russia’s war on Ukraine and Israel’s war on Gaza all disrupted global trade and EU energy security. These earlier crises should have taught the German government about how to respond politically to such shocks. But its reaction to the US-Israel war on Iran has again exposed the hypocrisy of energy politics in Germany. Friedrich Merz’s governing coalition of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU), Christian Social Union (CSU) and Social Democratic (SPD) parties, has responded to the latest disruption to oil shipments by doubling down on its commitment to fossil fuels. This has taken the form of new subsidies for fossil fuels and drafting new laws that could defund renewable energy projects. On 23 March, Katherina Reiche, Germany’s minister for economic affairs and energy, gave a remarkable speech at an energy conference in Houston, Texas, in which she called into question the EU law which enshrines the goal of net zero emissions by 2050. “There is a flexibility we have to get back,” she said, adding that this could only be achieved by “allowing different solutions and technologies” and accepting that it could mean the EU may miss its net zero goal by “maybe 5 or 10% by 2050”.

Excerpt from this story from EcoWatch:

A new study has found that 58 banks in the United States are “sabotaging” their own net-zero commitments by providing financing to meat, dairy and animal feed corporations.

Research for the report, Bull in the Climate Shop: Industrial livestock financing sabotages major U.S. banks’ climate commitments, was conducted by U.S. environmental nonprofit Friends of the Earth and Profundo, a research group based in the Netherlands.

From 2016 to 2023, $134 billion in loans and underwriting was provided to meat, dairy, food processing, animal feed and agri-commodity corporations by 58 U.S. banks, according to the report. More than 50 percent of the financing the researchers investigated came from three major lenders: Bank of America, JPMorgan Chase and Citigroup, a press release from Friends of the Earth said.

“Since 2021, banks across the globe have pledged to slash financed and facilitated emissions. As signatories to the Net Zero Banking Alliance, U.S. banks — including Bank of America, Citigroup, and JPMorgan Chase — committed to ‘transition the operational and attributable greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from their lending and investment portfolios to align with pathways to net zero by 2050 or sooner,’” the report said. “To meet these commitments, major U.S. banks have prioritized reducing GHG emissions from fossil fuel related financing and yet, year over year, they have continued to finance the sector. These banks also continue to finance high-emitting industrial livestock production.”