German Prime Minister Olaf Scholz urged attendees at COP27 on Monday not to lose sight of their renewable energy goals despite the impact of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
“There must not be a global renaissance of fossil fuels,” the chancellor said in a speech at the climate summit in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt.
“For Germany I can say: it won’t happen,” he added.
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Europe’s largest economy has been hit hard by falling energy imports from Russia and rising prices following the war in Ukraine.
To counter possible energy shortages in winter in the northern hemisphere, the government has decided to temporarily reopen coal-fired power plants.
But Schultz said this emergency measure will be “for a short time.”
“We are determined to get out of coal,” stressed the social democratic chancellor, who leads a coalition with Greens and Liberals.
For Schultz, the energy transition is “not only a climate, economic and ecological imperative”, but also a “security imperative”, as demonstrated by Germany’s dependence on Russian energy.
The German head of state underlined that “a drop in temperature by every tenth of a degree means less drought and floods, less conflicts for resources, less famine and crop failures and therefore more security and prosperity”.
Schulz stressed that Germany is ready to provide “greater” support to developing countries that pollute less but are more severely affected by the consequences of global warming.
And the German leader pledged to increase his contribution to the fight against global warming to 6 billion euros a year in 2025, up from 5.3 billion euros in 2021.
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