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Adoption of Germany's National Energy and Climate Plan (NECP)

Germany's National Energy and Climate Plan (NECP) was adopted in early June and submitted to the EU Commission. The NECPs allow the European Member States' energy and climate policies to be compared and coordinated for the first time.

Twenty-eight plans to achieve one goal: in order to achieve the EU targets for 2030, the EU Member States are to join forces to address the energy transition and mitigate climate change in the EU together. And the National Energy and Climate Plans (NECPs), as a new planning and monitoring instrument at EU level, are to help them do so.

Across 28 documents totalling thousands of pages, the EU Member States describe in detail their national energy and climate policies for a period of 10 years. The legal basis for this is the European Regulation on the Governance of the Energy Union (Governance Regulation). This Regulation requires all EU Member States to draft an NECP for the period between 2021 and 2030 and also sets down the rules for how the plans are to be structured and what these are to contain.

Energy and climate policies of all EU countries to be transparent and comparable

The NECPs allow for the European Member States' energy and climate policies to be compared and coordinated for the first time. This ensures transparency and a common basis for exchange – for example between neighbouring countries. This will help, for example, to prevent any negative impacts from the planned measures and make it easier to identify opportunities for cooperation.

The Integrated NECP adopted by the Federal Cabinet on 10 June 2020 is based on various national strategies, targets and measures such as the 2010 Energy Concept (in German only) , the 2030 Climate Action Programme (in German only) and the 2050 Energy Efficiency Strategy (in German only).

Concrete targets and an update every two years

The NECP contains specific targets such as increasing energy efficiency by reducing primary energy consumption by 30% by 2030 (compared to 2008) and expanding the share of renewable energies to 30% of gross final energy consumption by 2030. These are also the Federal Government's target contributions for achieving the EU energy targets for 2030. The NECP also reaffirms the national greenhouse gas reduction target of at least 55% by 2030 (compared to 1990) and the Federal Government's commitment at the UN Climate Change Summit in autumn 2019 to pursue greenhouse gas neutrality by 2050 as a long-term goal. As of 2023, a progress report on the NECP must be prepared every two years. This is because the EU Commission wants to assess the measures that each Member State is taking and the progress being made on reaching their targets.