Berliners vote down tighter climate goals

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A Sunday referendum in Berlin that would have forced the city to strive to be climate neutral by 2030 failed as votes supporting the proposal was not enough, the German news agency dpa reported.

The measure would have bound the new government to invest heavily in renewable energy, building efficiency, and public transport. Also, had the referendum been passed, the city would have had less than eight years to stop contributing further to global warming.

Existing law sets the deadline for implementing the measure in 2045, which is also Germany’s national target.

After having counted about 98% of the votes, those in favor of the proposal were just ahead of the opponents, the city-state’s election administration announced. However, that result met one requirement for a successful proposal. As for the second requirement, which is a quorum of at least 25% of all eligible voters, it was not met, the dpa reported.

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Shortly before the count ended, around 423,000 were supporting the referendum and around 405,000 votes were against it. For a successful referendum, the quorum needed at least 608,000 votes supporting the proposal.

The result "shows that the majority of Berliners also see that the demands of the referendum could not have been implemented - not even if they were cast into law," the city's mayor, Franziska Giffey, said.

A grassroots group that had initiated the proposal argued that Berlin’s present target is not in line with the 2015 Paris Agreement, which goal is to pursue efforts "to limit the temperature increase to 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels."

The conservative Christian Democratic Union (CDU), which is likely to lead Berlin's new government, had opposed the earlier target.

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Berlin, a city of four million people with few renewable energy sources nearby or geothermal heating, does not have what is needed to make that goal more achievable, Bernd Hirschl from Berlin's Institute for Ecological Economy Research said.

Still, the referendum helped rekindle the debate over climate policy and the changes that must be accepted to achieve climate neutrality regardless of the deadlines, Hirschl told Reuters.

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