By David Goeßmann
This article was originally published by Truthout
We must reject the argument that climate protection is a burden on the economy, says energy expert Hans-Josef Fell.
Since Donald Trump took office, the U.S. government has been more aggressively boosting fossil fuels to exert geopolitical dominance. President Donald Trump stated unequivocally that the military assault on Venezuela and the kidnapping of President Nicolás Maduro and his wife are aimed at gaining control of the country’s oil reserves. Meanwhile, oil company shares are soaring, a dividend on the investments of “Big Oil,” the major donor to Trump’s election campaign. It is also no coincidence that Nigeria (which the U.S. bombed over Christmas) and Iran and Greenland, which Trump repeatedly threatens, are oil-rich regions, too.
While the U.S. is focusing on fossil fuel extraction, a dramatic transformation is taking place worldwide. In China, CO2 emissions have been stagnating or declining for over a year and a half. The expansion of global renewable energy capacity reached an unprecedented 582 gigawatts (GW) last year. USD 2.4 trillion was invested in the energy transition, a third of which went into renewables. These are historic records, even if they are not enough to achieve the goal set at COP28 in Dubai: tripling the installed capacity of renewable energy worldwide by 2030.
Against this backdrop, climate and energy expert Hans-Josef Fell sees the world at a crossroads. Opting for fossil fuels not only leads to planetary catastrophe, but it is also economically misguided, he says.
Hans-Josef Fell was a member of the German Bundestag from 1998 to 2013. As a leading climate figure of the Green Party, Fell helped to advance the energy transition in Germany. He was a drafter of the Renewable Energy Sources Act (EEG), a law that came into force in Germany 25 years ago and has been copied by more than 60 countries. EEG promotes renewable energies (wind, solar, hydro, biomass) and guarantees their preferential feed-in to the power grid as well as fixed feed-in tariffs (which provide above-market prices) in order to drive forward expansion and shape the energy transition.
Today, Fell is president of the Energy Watch Group, an international network of scientists and parliamentarians researching fossil, nuclear and renewable energy resources, and, together with climate activists such as Bill McKibben, is an advocate for 100 percent renewable energy. In this interview, Fell discusses the widespread rollback of climate policies, how to transition to a zero-emission economy, and how investment in renewable energy is driving China’s economic boom.
This interview has been lightly edited for clarity.
David Goeßmann: While greenhouse gases continue to rise to record levels globally, the U.S. is still the second-largest emitter in absolute terms, but with much higher per capita consumption and historical emissions than China. President Donald Trump has reversed the steps toward energy transition initiated under the Biden administration, attacked all environmental protection measures, and issued thousands of new oil and gas drilling permits while U.S. greenhouse gas emissions are going up again. In Europe, we see a boom of fossil gas and gas-fired power plants while overall climate policy is in decline. For instance, the German government under Chancellor Friedrich Merz watered down the European Union’s (EU) climate targets and undermined the EU’s ban on combustion engines from 2035. The EU has also weakened the so-called Green New Deal. How do you assess climate protection in the industrialized world?
Hans-Josef Fell: There is no climate protection worthy of the name in the rich countries, nor globally. The Earth’s temperature is accelerating toward three degrees Celsius by 2050, as new calculations by the German Meteorological Society and the German Physical Society show. The Energy Watch Group has also clearly described this; one only has to extrapolate the current path of exponentially rising temperatures from the last 20 years.
This alarming result is also clear, because as early as 1990, the limit of 350 parts per million (ppm) of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere that is sustainable for human civilization was exceeded. Today, the atmosphere is already overloaded with almost 430 ppm. An effective climate protection target that could enable the planet, which is already overheated by more than 1.5 degrees Celsius in 2024, to cool down can therefore only be to reduce the concentration of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere (not to be confused with annual emissions!) to below 350 ppm. This can only be achieved if all emissions are stopped in about two decades and, at the same time, huge amounts of carbon are removed from the atmosphere. The anti-climate measures mentioned above and many others are irresponsibly counterproductive, as they even reward new increased emissions with tax breaks and, with tax subsidies, even promote the expansion of highly climate-damaging natural gas power plants and natural gas infrastructure. At the same time, these tax breaks for climate polluters place a further burden on the already highly indebted national budget, which could lead to crises that we remember all too well from Greece’s national bankruptcy crisis in 2010.
We see in different industrialized countries that emissions are going down; even in the U.S., the trend since 2005 shows a slight decrease. The EU has a climate goal to be climate neutral by 2050 while the Biden administration at least committed to net zero emissions by mid-century, though Trump revoked that. Will policies like these be enough?
Since we need to return to 350 ppm in a few decades, climate neutrality in 2045 is far too late and far too weak. In addition to achieving a zero-emission economy, we also need a strong carbon-reducing economy, which can be achieved through reforestation, regenerative agriculture, and marine algae farming.
A zero-emission economy with 100 percent renewable energies and an emission-free circular economy is possible — all the technologies are there. All that is needed is the declared political and social will and strong investment from the financial sector and private individuals. Building an emission-free industry would also boost the economy. However, only China is currently pursuing such a strategy aggressively. In the EU and the U.S., fossil fuel interests have regained the upper hand.
You’re often in China. How do you see developments there in terms of climate protection and the energy transition compared to Europe and the U.S.?
A zero-emission economy is based on an energy supply that is 100 percent renewable. If we had that globally, about 60 percent of all greenhouse gas emissions would be stopped. China alone — currently still the largest emitter of greenhouse gases — is on an industrial growth path toward this goal. Sixty-two percent of global photovoltaic growth, 71 percent of global wind energy, and about 60 percent of all batteries and electric vehicles were brought to market in China last year. In 2024, more than 90 percent of the solar cells installed worldwide and 70 percent of electric car batteries were produced in China. Investment in clean energy has been growing for years, while production capacities are being expanded. In 2023, investment increased by 40 percent compared to the previous year.
This is the key driver of China’s economic boom, which has been ongoing for years. Europe, with its half-hearted renewable energy policy, and the U.S. under Trump, with its anti-energy transition agenda, are threatening to go into industrial decline. The industry of the near future will be clean, renewable, and emission-free. Those who still insist on subsidizing natural gas, fossil fuel combustion engines, fossil fuel heating systems, and fossil fuel-based industrial production will ultimately lose entire industries to China and end up in the poorhouse.
At the moment, we are seeing a backlash against the green transformation in many societies, especially in the rich industrialized countries. Do you nevertheless see positive developments in the global energy transition?
Yes, renewable energies are advancing massively worldwide. However, this is being driven primarily by China and increasingly also by BRICS countries other than Russia [the BRICS group includes Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa]. Those who, like the U.S. and the EU, want to protect their own dirty fossil fuel economy from Chinese dominance with tariffs on solar products or electric cars will only lose market share, as we are already seeing clearly today with the German car manufacturers VW, Daimler, and BMW, which are late to the game and still half-hearted in their commitment to e-mobility.
You say that an energy transition in most countries can be completed within 10 years. Explain how such a rapid transition could take place.
Until around 2012, we had in Germany about 30 percent annual growth in solar energy, and until 2017, similar growth in wind energy. Had these growth rates in solar expansion not been halted in 2012 in the wake of the devastating amendments to the Renewable Energy Sources Act (EEG) by Federal Environment Minister Peter Altmaier, and then in wind energy from 2017 onwards by Environment Minister Sigmar Gabriel, Germany could have achieved a full supply of 100 percent green electricity by around 2022 with the corresponding parallel expansion of storage facilities. The increases in natural gas prices as a result of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s war against Ukraine would have had little impact on our economy, energy security would have been very high, the average 81 billion euros in import costs for fossil fuels would have fallen dramatically, and emissions would have been significantly lower.
Today, we must build on the success story of the EEG from 2000 with its basic principles of fixed feed-in tariffs, whereby a modern EEG should also be geared toward system integration into the electricity grid. Then, with the simultaneous expansion of electric heating, e-vehicles, and industrial production, a full supply of 100 percent green electricity can be achieved by 2030. Such a market ramp-up would also give the domestic renewable energy industry a chance and reduce dependence on China.
If a rapid transition is possible and even economically advantageous, why is it not being implemented politically? Who is continuing to put the brakes on this?
The fossil fuel and nuclear industries have a firm grip on large parts of the media, both traditional and social, and thus also on the political debate. Fake news is constantly being produced, e.g., that renewable energies are driving up electricity prices or that there is a nuclear renaissance in the world. Bavarian Prime Minister Markus Söder recently claimed that Germany could support its economy by quickly building small nuclear power plants like those already in operation in Canada. A glance at Canada shows that there are no such small nuclear reactors there, not even under construction. There are only two in the planning stage, and their completion is still up in the air. So even a high-ranking politician can lie to the public with impunity.
In the broader debate, climate protection is often portrayed as a burden. In your opinion, what is wrong with the way the energy, transport, and agricultural transitions to protect the environment are discussed in the media?
From the outset, the fossil fuel industry has managed to defame climate protection as a burden on the economy. However, this only applies to the fossil fuel industry, which will of course have to completely cease its business activities involving oil, gas, and coal. But climate protection is a booster for the clean, emission-free economy, as China is now making abundantly clear.
But even many climate activists have adopted the fossil fuel industry’s framing and talked about burden-sharing in climate protection. Spending on renewable energies is not a cost burden, but rather an investment that creates jobs and tax revenue while reducing the costs of damage to health care due to poor air quality or environmental and climate damage. Climate protection is therefore not a burden, but an improvement in prosperity for everyone, except for businesses in the fossil fuel-polluting economy.
In recent years, environmental movements and climate activists have developed various strategies to promote more climate protection in countries. At the moment, it has become difficult to put the issue on the agenda. The pandemic, the wars in Ukraine and the Middle East, and the rise of right-wing authoritarian parties have dominated the headlines. In your opinion, what strategies make sense to get governments to take climate action?
Climate activists must finally free themselves from the narratives of fossil fuel industry representatives and demonstrate that climate protection is an essential contribution to the economy, creates new jobs and industries, reduces the costs of disease and environmental damage, relieves private households of high energy costs, and ultimately slows down the galloping national debt. Furthermore, the lack of climate protection is one of the causes of the major problems that are weighing so heavily on us: increasing refugee movements, famines as a result of crop failures, wars over oil or natural gas, fossil fuels as a means of political blackmail, and much more.
Let us finally stop leaving the debate to the fossil fuel and nuclear climate destroyers, of which the oil and gas industry alone has been making around $2.8 billion in net profits every day for 50 years, ultimately leaving behind more and more poverty, suffering, disease, and a destroyed planet.
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