Greenhouse gas emissions in Germany have again missed targets set by the Climate Protection Act and barely fell at all in 2025.
Emissions decreased by just 0.1% last year compared to the previous year, according to data from the German Environment Agency.
The country’s emissions in 2025 were equivalent to 649m tonnes of CO2, worse than those forecast by the expert group Agora Energiewende, which anticipated a 1.5% drop year-on-year.
In 2024, a more significant drop of 3.4% was recorded.
Germany’s environment minister, Carsten Schneider, criticised the lack of improvement at a conference in Berlin on Saturday.
The Social Democrat said that despite an increasing acceptance of electric cars and heat pumps, overall progress was “too slow” and urged citizens to accelerate their adoption of renewable power sources for both environmental and security reasons.
“What benefits the climate also increases our security and economic strength,” he said. “Every additional kilowatt-hour of renewable energy makes our country less dependent on oil and gas and our energy supply more secure.”
Carsten Schneider: ‘What benefits the climate also increases our security and economic strength.’ Photograph: Ina Fassbender/AFP/Getty Images
Despite this, both Schneider and the German Environment Agency remained optimistic that the country could achieve the 2030 climate target of reducing greenhouse gas emissions by 65%, compared with 1990.
Schneider welcomed the “growing enthusiasm for climate protection technologies” such as electric cars and heat pumps.
“And there are more newly approved wind power projects than ever before. This gives hope that progress will once again pick up speed in the years to come,” he said.
Emissions will have to decrease by an average of 42 million tonnes of CO2 equivalent per year from 2026 onward, more than 40 times the reduction recorded last year, to meet the 2030 reductions target.
In 2025, Germany’s greenhouse gas emissions were 48% below the level of the 1990 base year.
Schneider said it was “particularly urgent” to reduce emissions in the transport and building sectors – where emissions rose last year – to avoid the costly purchase of emission allowances from other EU member states or fines.
The pursuit of climate targets in Germany, a priority for the previous government of Social Democrat Olaf Scholz, appears less certain under the mandate of conservative chancellor, Friedrich Merz.
His government, which has been in power since May 2025, has instead advocated easing environmental standards.
Germany is Europe’s largest economy and its manufacturing powerhouse, and globally is behind only the economies of the United States and China in size.
