Berlin Rejects 2030 Carbon-Neutral Target, Gains €5B Transition Fund

Residents of Berlin, Germany rejected a referendum aimed at achieving carbon neutrality 15 years earlier than planned. But the failed vote in late March brought silver linings, including a windfall €5-billion fund for climate action and valuable lessons for other cities.

Berlin 2030 Klimaneutral (Berlin 2030 Climate-Neutral) was a citizen-led initiative that sought public consent to amend the Berlin Climate Protection and Energy Transition Act of 2016 to advance the city’s climate neutrality goal. The March 26 vote failed to receive the necessary share of yes votes from residents, despite the backing of popular environmental groups like the German branch of student-led Fridays for Future and the search engine Ecosia.

Had the referendum passed, the German capital would have been legally bound to make itself carbon neutral by 2030 rather than 2045, and to include greenhouse gases like methane along with carbon dioxide in its carbon accounting, explained Clean Energy Wire (CLEW). It would have also strengthened the language of Berlin’s climate law, replacing the word “target” with “duty,” among other changes.

Many who backed the referendum said they felt Berlin, like the rest of Germany, was moving too slowly on climate action.

A lot of people see climate politics as a marathon,” said Julia Epp, a scientist at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research and chair of the Berlin branch of Friends of the Earth Germany. “But it’s more that we need to sprint because we started too slow.”

“At the moment, climate policy is simply not sufficient to ensure a future worth living in our city,” Jessamine Davis, a spokesperson for Klimaneustart Berlin (Climate New Start Berlin), told Reuters. Klimaneustart and allied groups collected 260,000 signatures to ensure the referendum was tabled, but the measure faced an uphill battle from the start, with all political parties, including the Greens, rejecting it as “unrealistic.”

Still, climate neutrality was achievable by 2045, if fossil-dependent Berlin tapped into the renewable riches of nearby Brandenburg, Energy Watch Group President Hans-Josef Fell told CLEW a month before the vote. The city would also have to retrofit buildings, expand transit, and populate every available flat surface with photovoltaics, added Fell, a Greens members of the Bundestag from 1998 to 2013 who drafted Germany’s signature Renewable Energy Sources Act in 2000.

More than 100 cities across Europe, including Paris, Warsaw, Rome, Stockholm, and Helsinki, have united with a European Union initiative to attain climate neutrality by 2030. Berlin’s efforts to accelerate its own climate action failed to gain traction. But the attempt offers insight to climate-conscious citizens and city-based climate organizations seeking to accelerate decarbonization efforts in their own communities. Key takeaways include emphasizing voter turnout, avoiding impractical promises, and acknowledging the significance of a referendum, whatever the outcome.

Lesson One: Get the Vote Out

The Klimaneustart referendum did pass by a slim majority (50.9%), but the measure was turned back because Berlin does not allow changes to its laws without least 25% of the support of the entire voting population. Only 442,000 (18%) of Berlin’s roughly 2.4 million voters said “yes.” Another 423,418 voted “no,” and 3,538 ballots were spoiled.

The city-state’s climate progressives have been here before. A 2013 referendum seeking to return its electricity grid to public control and speed up the switch to renewables secured a “yes” vote of 83%, but missed the mandated proportional support threshold by 0.9%.

Leading up to the vote, Potsdam Institute’s Epp told CLEW that getting people motivated to vote in referendums was a “big struggle.”

“We have a lot of people who are interested in climate politics and who will definitely go, but one-fourth of Berlin’s population? That’s a lot of people,” Epp said.

And a big proportion of Berliners were on the fence about the climate neutrality target. CLEW wrote that 12% of respondents in an early research poll were undecided.

Turnout might also have been hampered for a referendum that was not timed to coincide with state elections, as is common practice in Germany.

Lesson Two: Beware ‘False Promises’

The referendum’s failure showed that “Berlin says yes to climate protection—but says no to false promises,” Christian Democratic Union (CDU) lawmaker Stefan Evers told Reuters.

Berlin’s outgoing mayor, Franziska Giffey, added that while it was important to keep pushing hard on climate action, it would simply not be possible for Berlin to reach climate neutrality by 2030.

“People have to be told this clearly: everything else is nonsense,” Giffey said.

Concerns about Berlin’s inclination for magical thinking on the climate file are not new. Back in 2019, when the city’s climate neutrality target was set for 2050, CLEW wrote that to hit the target—and make itself a municipal showcase for Energiewende, Germany’s wider low-carbon transition—Berlin would have to upend transport, electricity, and heating systems, “as well as many municipal political attitudes.” This rang true even though a “largely pro-Energiewende” city government had taken the helm in 2016.

Ramona Pop, Berlin’s senator for economics, energy and public enterprises, said at the time that Berlin had “laid a cornerstone for a climate-neutral city, across all departments.”

“The State of Berlin is moving towards its goals and is showing the national government, which has practically given up on its ambitions in this direction, that climate policy is one of the most important tasks of our time.”

And yet a snapshot of Berlin’s energy use showed “just how much needs to change if politicians are going to live up to their pledges,” CLEW wrote. In 2015, “a mere 4% of total primary energy consumed hailed from renewable sources.” And “when it comes to electricity, renewables made up just 2.5% of gross power consumption.”

Even now, at least 80% of Berlin’s energy comes from fossil fuel sources, according to Reuters. And the city “was second-to-last in a list of German states judged on their track record and enthusiasm for green energy,” says CLEW. It wasn’t until 2021 that the state parliament of Berlin passed a law requiring private owners of all new buildings, and of those that undergo significant roof renovations, to install photovoltaic systems that would help bring Berlin closer to its goal of a 25% share of solar power in its electricity consumption. The rule was slated to come into force in 2023.

Another hurdle in Berlin’s pursuit of becoming a model city: Most of its residents (80%) are renters, explained CLEW. Their multi-storey apartment blocks use less energy than single-family homes, but “retrofitting the city’s building stock to be more energy efficient is a complex task, as landlords have little incentive to undertake costly upgrades to their homes and tenants fear rising rents as a result of such upgrades.”

In a city with an “acute housing shortage, landlords can easily rent their property, regardless of how renovated and energy efficient they are,” CLEW said. That’s a big problem, given that buildings generate roughly 50% of the city’s footprint.

The referendum included a subsidy to cover the rent increases that would result from retrofitting buildings to a climate-neutral standard by 2030. But as Reuters reported, lawmakers were concerned about the short-term costs the legally binding deadline would have incurred.

Scepticism about the referendum’s value was also rooted in the reality that Berlin’s climate action depends heavily on what happens at the federal level.

And private sector response was also mixed, reported CLEW. Picking up on the “false promises” theme, the Berlin industry lobby group UVB condemned the referendum and its backers.

“Conning Berliners into believing that the capital can become climate-neutral by 2030 is dishonest,” UVB said. “Anyone who stirs up other expectations among voters risks a further loss of confidence in our democratic system.”

More than 100 Berlin companies disagreed with that assessment, however, with many local business leaders signing an open letter in support of the referendum.

Lesson Three: Lose the Battle, Win the Fight

Ten days before the referendum, Berlin’s incoming coalition government announced an early policy proposal: at least €5 billion for a “special climate protection fund” for the city, with a focus on paid retrofits, green mobility, and climate-friendly heating.

The funding could double to €10 billion after an evaluation next year, CLEW reported.

When the vote failed, Daniel Böldt, political editor for the German daily Der Tagesspiegel, called the funding commitment a “saving grace” for the referendum’s authors.

“Without them, the special fund would probably not have existed,” Böldt wrote. “With their unrealistic legislative proposal, they will at least have helped to comply with the existing climate protection law.”

Bernd Hirschl of Berlin’s Institute for Ecological Economy Research agreed. Even if Berlin lacks what is needed to achieve climate neutrality by 2030, he said, the referendum served “to revive the debate over climate policy and the changes people must accept to reach climate neutrality, regardless of the deadlines.”

Because “it’s not about 2030,” he added. “It’s about the question of whether we want to send a signal to politicians or not.”