Listen on * Spotify * Apple Music * Amazon Music Wenige Tage vor Beginn der Weltklimakonferenz in Brasilien ringen die EU-Umweltminister in Brüssel um das neue Klimaziel für 2040 – minus 90 Prozent CO₂-Emissionen. Berlin will möglichst wenig Emissionen ins Ausland verlagern, Paris pocht auf großzügige Carbon Credits und eine Revisionsklausel, die Ziele bei steigenden Energiepreisen lockern könnte.Rixa Fürsen spricht mit Josh Groeneveld über die schwierige Suche nach einem europäischen Kompromiss. Außerdem: was zehn Jahre nach dem Pariser Abkommen von den großen Versprechen geblieben ist. Der Link zum kostenlosen Probe-Abo vom Premium Briefing POLITICO Pro Energie & Klima am Morgen. https://www.politico.eu/politico-pro-energie-klima-am-morgen-newsletter-trial/ Das Berlin Playbook als Podcast gibt es morgens um 5 Uhr. Gordon Repinski und das POLITICO-Team bringen euch jeden Morgen auf den neuesten Stand in Sachen Politik — kompakt, europäisch, hintergründig. Und für alle Hauptstadt-Profis: Unser Berlin Playbook-Newsletter liefert jeden Morgen die wichtigsten Themen und Einordnungen. Hier gibt es alle Informationen und das kostenlose Playbook-Abo. Mehr von Berlin Playbook-Host und Executive Editor von POLITICO in Deutschland, Gordon Repinski, gibt es auch hier:   Instagram: @gordon.repinski | X: @GordonRepinski.

Oil giant TotalEnergies misled its customers and the general public when it claimed to be a leading actor in the transition to green energy, a French court ruled today. Following its rebranding from Total to TotalEnergies in 2021, the French oil producer launched an advertising campaign stating that the company had the “ambition to achieve carbon neutrality by 2050.” It claimed “to be a major player in the energy transition” and to put “sustainable development at the heart of our strategy, our projects, and our operations to contribute to the well-being of populations, in line with the Sustainable Development Goals defined by the United Nations.” But the court found that TotalEnergies had engaged in “misleading commercial practices” by disseminating claims on its website which made the company’s operations appear greener than they were — a practice known as greenwashing. According to the court, these claims were “likely to mislead consumers about the scope of the Group’s environmental commitments.” The court ordered TotalEnergies to stop spreading the misleading claims “within one month” or face a €10,000 fine per day of delay. The case against the oil major was brought in 2022 by a group of green NGOs including Friends of the Earth France and Greenpeace France with the support of the legal charity ClientEarth. “We hope that the court’s decision will help shed light on the reality of Total’s activities, which continue to expand oil and gas operations,” Juliette Renaud, a member of Friends of the Earth France, said in a statement. “It is time to force Total and the other majors to comply with scientists’ recommendations to put an end to the development of new fossil fuel projects,” she added. TotalEnergies was contacted for comments but did not reply by the time of publication. The company can decide to appeal the decision.

Listen on * Spotify * Apple Music * Amazon Music Gordon Repinski im Gespräch mit BMW-Chef Oliver Zipse. Im Zentrum: Der neue SUV iX3 und die „Neue Klasse“. BMWs frontaler Angriff auf Tesla und chinesische Hersteller wird am heutigen Freitag, 11 Uhr deutscher Zeit der Öffentlichkeit offiziell vorgestellt. Zipse erklärt die neue Designsprache „Licht statt Chrom“, das „Panoramic Display“ im Innenraum und warum auch der Sound einer sich öffnenden oder zuschlagenden Autotür mit entscheidet. Der CEO spricht über den harten Wettbewerb in China, seinen persönlichen Austausch mit Donald Trump über die US-Zölle und warum BMW trotz schwieriger Zeiten nicht in der Krise steckt. Es geht außerdem über die zurückliegenden Monate seiner Amtszeit, die Zukunft der deutschen Autoindustrie und was er vom angekündigten „Herbst der Reformen“ der Bundesregierung erwartet. Das Berlin Playbook als Podcast gibt es jeden Morgen ab 5 Uhr. Gordon Repinski und das POLITICO-Team liefern Politik zum Hören – kompakt, international, hintergründig. Für alle Hauptstadt-Profis: Der Berlin Playbook-Newsletter bietet jeden Morgen die wichtigsten Themen und Einordnungen. Jetzt kostenlos abonnieren. Mehr von Host und POLITICO Executive Editor Gordon Repinski: Instagram: @gordon.repinski | X: @GordonRepinski.

Vast amounts of valuable thermal energy are slipping through the fingers of Europe’s critical industries and institutions every day, as the heat escapes from their operations or remains untapped from natural ambient sources like nearby land, air or water. Today, some businesses and communities are harnessing this heat using innovative heat pump technologies to dramatically cut costs and CO2 emissions. As Europe races to revitalize key industries and accelerate growth, deploying heat pumps at scale is a key strategy for success. Consider this: in 2024 alone, Johnson Controls’ heat pumps cut energy costs for customers by 53 percent and emissions by 60 percent. > in 2024 alone, Johnson Controls’ heat pumps cut energy costs for customers by > 53 percent and emissions by 60 percent. Sound too good to be true? Let’s look at organizations realizing this powerful win-win every day. A hospital in Germany put a heat pump to work to tap heat energy 200 meters below the facility and realized a 30 percent cut in energy costs while producing enough heat to cover 80 percent of the hospital’s demand. The Aalborg hospital in Denmark is close to zeroing out carbon emissions, achieving an 80-90 percent cut while driving energy costs down by 80 percent. And in the UK, Hounslow Council transitioned from gas boilers to air source heat pumps, cutting its energy costs and CO2 emissions by 50 percent across more than 60 schools and public buildings. Natural and waste heat energy resources can be put to work for industry as well. Take, for example, a leading food company in Spain. Installing heat pumps at two of their manufacturing facilities enabled them to save €1.5 million per year and reduce CO2 emissions by nearly 2,000 tons, the equivalent annual emissions of around 400 homes. Nestle’s Biessenhofen plant in Germany also significantly cut energy costs for hot water production while lowering CO2 emissions by 10 percent.   The heat pumps powering these successes? Made by Johnson Controls here in Europe. So, the opportunity at hand is magnified as Europe can lead in cutting-edge energy technologies while putting the machines to work to boost core, centuries-old and critical legacy industries. To put the potential of industry heating needs and excess industrial heat in context, heat accounts for more than 60 percent of energy use in European industries, according to the European Heat Pump Association. Meanwhile, a leading European industrial company estimates that wasted heat in the European Union would just about meet the bloc’s entire energy demands for central heating and hot water. > To put the potential of industry heating needs and excess industrial heat in > context, heat accounts for more than 60 percent of energy use in European > industries, The fact is that untapped heat energy is everywhere. It’s critical that we put it to work now.  A catalyst for a competitive, energy-secure and sustainable Europe   Today EU companies pay 2-3 times more for their electricity than competitors in the United States and China — a disparity that puts a constraint on the competitiveness of European industries, according to analysis by the Draghi Report on the future of Europe’s competitiveness. The report calls for immediate action to lower energy costs and emissions as a combined competition and climate strategy.  With the visionary Clean Industrial Deal, European leaders are moving to do just that. Heat pumps can be front and center in this agenda. Heat pumps quickly bolster the bottom line: they are state-of-the-art, so they ensure the reliability and uptime of critical operations; and they are essential in driving every euro to growth and innovation instead of going out the door in excess energy bills. As leaders turn the Clean Industrial Deal into legislation this year, they can ensure essential industries and organizations prosper by including incentives for heat pumps, while also reforming electricity pricing so the full magnitude of savings can be realized. It is estimated that in Germany in 2024, for example, extraneous taxes on the electric bill represented 30 percent of cost — artificially increasing the cost of electricity and narrowing instead of increasing choices to meet critical energy needs with clean electricity.  Expansive troves of natural and wasted energy represent a huge opportunity for growth and competitiveness. Heat pump technologies are the enablers. They tap into this ‘free energy’ and transform it into the fuel that drives industrial processes, heats spaces, and delivers the higher temperature water and energy that’s essential for processing, pasteurizing, bulking and sterilizing. Natural and waste heat: a natural resource for companies   Seen at scale, our natural and escaping industrial heat are a new natural energy resource to be put to work, and a powerful economic catalyst to strengthen Europe’s competitiveness.   Visualization of the Hamburg Dradenau site where four 15-MW heat pumps will tap into treated wastewater to supply green heat to around 39,000 homes from 2026. Natural and waste energy is all around us. Recovering heat from a city’s wastewater treatment plant represents a powerful example. In Utrecht, the Netherlands, for example, a heat pump extracts residual heat from treated wastewater to provide heat to around 20,000 homes. And from 2026 in Hamburg, Germany, four large-scale heat pumps will extract heat from treated wastewater and feed it into the central district heating network, heating around 39,000 homes. Pharmaceutical companies, chemical facilities, and food and beverage enterprises are among the industries that can tap into energy they generate as a byproduct of the processes that produce the medicines and products we rely on every day.  In our modern data and information technology economy, data centers are among the biggest new sources of excess heat. The International Energy Agency notes that reused heat from data centers could meet around 300 TWh of heating demand by 2030, equivalent to 10 percent of European space heating needs. As artificial intelligence leads to increasingly more computing power in data centers, those numbers will grow significantly. The fact that up to half of the energy consumed by a data center is needed for cooling demonstrates how much heat is available. With heat pumps, we can capture that heat and put it to productive use. A trifecta for competitiveness, energy security and carbon neutrality Heat pump systems are key for Europe’s competitiveness, its energy security and tackling climate change. Tapping into the vast energy resources that are available everywhere and right now, heat pumps have the potential to become one of the continent’s next biggest industrial success stories. Let’s seize the moment for a future of economic strength and security, environmental health, and having pride in them being made right here. > Heat pump systems are key for Europe’s competitiveness, its energy security > and tackling climate change.

BERLIN — Germany’s Greens believed they were only just getting started, but they may have already reached a dead end. After becoming a key part of German Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s coalition government with their best election result ever in 2021, the Greens believed they would cement their place as an established party with the bonafides to govern while making the fight against climate change mainstream. But now the party is set to return to its long-standing position in the opposition after a disappointing fourth-place finish in Germany’s national election, far behind Friedrich Merz’s victorious conservatives. That leaves the Greens — who emerged from environmental and peace protest movements of the 1970s and early 1980s — with nowhere to go but back to their activist roots. “We will make life difficult for the conservatives,” said Katharina Dröge, the co-leader of the Greens parliamentary group, after the vote. “If you really intend to dismantle climate protection in this country, there will be parliamentary resistance against it.” The problem for the Greens is they may have already done everything they can to influence the next government’s climate policies. Incoming Chancellor Merz needed the Greens to pass a historic package of constitutional reforms through parliament earlier this month that will unleash hundreds of billions of euros in new borrowing for defense and infrastructure — and the Greens used that unexpected leverage to great effect, pushing the conservative leader to commit €100 billion to fight climate change in order to reach a goal of carbon neutrality by 2045. But with Merz likely to close a deal with the center-left Social Democratic Party (SPD) to form the next coalition government in the coming weeks, that’s likely the last direct say Germany’s Greens, once the great hope of European environmentalists, will have in forming national policy for years. At the same time, there are many ways things can go wrong from the perspective of those who want to see the German government do more to fight climate change. “It’s good that there’s clarity on climate funding, but there’s no guarantee that the money will actually flow into meaningful climate protection measures,” said Vicki Duscha, a climate policy expert at the Fraunhofer Society, Europe’s largest applied research institution. The Greens are now being forced to confront their relative powerlessness while locked in an impassioned internal debate about which course to follow in their quest to win back power. SPLIT PERSONALITY The Greens have long been split between two factions: the realos, or realists, the more moderate and pragmatic wing of the party, and the fundis, the fundamentalists, who are less willing to compromise on their core beliefs. The divide in many ways remains intact as the Greens seek a new identity in opposition, with some in the party seeing a centrist approach as more likely to bring them back to power, and others arguing they need to double down on their core ideals. The problem for the Greens is they may have already done everything they can to influence the next government’s climate policies. | Maja Hitij/Getty Images Whichever way they go, they are bound to pay a price. While in power the Greens endured fierce attacks from right-wing politicians, who depicted them as willing to destroy Germany’s economy for their ideology. The Greens’ push to replace gas boilers with more environmentally friendly heat pumps came under particular attack. At the same time, climate activists sharply criticized the Greens for making compromises that party leaders viewed as a necessary response to the Russian invasion of Ukraine — and the energy crunch that followed. When Greens politicians advocated one compromise deal on coal in 2022, activists in movements like Fridays for Future, once seen as a natural ally of the Greens, became some of their loudest critics. “The climate crisis makes no compromises,” Linda Kastrup, a Fridays for Future activist, said at the time. But given their new place in the opposition, the only way to maneuever politically may be back to the left — to the fundi side of things. Sven-Christian Kindler, a former Greens lawmaker who did not run for reelection in the February vote, sees the Greens’ missteps as rooted in what he sees as the party’s shift to the center in recent years. When Greens politicians advocated one compromise deal on coal in 2022, activists in movements like Fridays for Future, once seen as a natural ally of the Greens, became some of their loudest critics. | Omer Messinger/Getty Images “Some of us assumed that by being pragmatic, we could fill the political void left by [former Chancellor] Angela Merkel,” Kindler told POLITICO. After Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, that shift to the center became more pronounced, many inside the party believe. Green Economy Minister Robert Habeck’s move to keep coal plants running longer than promised was one key shift. But the Greens also abandoned their pacifist roots, with Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock forcefully pushing for arms deliveries to Kyiv. “All that combined cost us votes — despite what we did right in government,” Kindler said. For many inside the party, the solution is clear. “My suggestion: Become greener again,” said Felix Banaszak, one of the Greens’ national leaders, in a recent interview. “This includes talking more about ecology again, i.e. climate, environmental and nature conservation, and justifying climate protection on its own merits — instead of just as a lever for economic growth,” he went on. “Now is the time to prevent ecological regression.”