According to a survey conducted by the opinion research institute Forsa, a significant majority of people in Germany support the goal of achieving climate neutrality by 2045. This information was reported by the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung following an analysis by the RWI Leibniz Institute for Economic Research.
One-third of respondents consider this core pillar of climate and economic policy to be “unconditionally correct” while an additional 38% believe the 2045 target is correct with “minor reservations”. Only 13% of those surveyed by Forsa in October and November found the projected climate neutrality by that date to be “incorrect”.
However, only four percent of respondents think that climate neutrality will actually be reached by 2045. Interestingly, 32% of respondents anticipate that Germany will “slightly miss” the goal, while a substantial 64% expect that the target will be “significantly missed”.
The survey also tested whether this level of support changes when respondents are informed that Germany intends to become climate neutral independently of the rest of the world. Among those who received this specific piece of information before answering, even more people reported that the national German goal was “unconditionally correct” (38%, an increase of five percentage points compared to the group without this prompt). Conversely, a slightly higher number of respondents considered the goal “not correct” (16% compared to 13% in the control group).
For context, Germany and 194 other nations pledged at the Paris Agreement in 2015 to achieve climate neutrality in the second half of this century. The international treaty also stipulated keeping the temperature increase well below 2 degrees Celsius compared to pre-industrial levels and taking efforts to limit it to 1.5 degrees. Based on this, the German Expert Council on Environmental Issues published a report calculating the remaining greenhouse gas emissions budget Germany has until climate neutrality is achieved. In 2021, the Federal Constitutional Court referenced this report when, in its climate ruling, rescinded interim climate targets that were still aimed at neutrality by 2050.
