Between War and Budget Crisis: The Climate Policy of the Scholz Government

The fundamental characteristic of the traffic light coalition government was marked programmatic heterogeneity, particularly with regard to climate policy. This heterogeneity impacted the coalition’s climate policy decisions to varying degrees during the government’s three phases. During the first phase (until around the end of 2021), the shock of Russia’s attack on Ukraine and the resulting problems led to differences being contained, ensuring a certain capacity to act. Under the impact of the energy crisis, a far-reaching reform of wind energy was achieved. In the second phase (from the beginning of 2022), however, conflicts over regulations emerged, as evidenced by the Building Energy Act, perhaps the most controversial climate policy project of all. The third phase (from November 2023) began when the Federal Constitutional Court ruled that part of the Climate and Transformation Fund was unconstitutional. This deprived the coalition of its climate policy logic, which had consisted of defusing regulatory conflicts with money. While a procedural weakening of the Climate Protection Act was achieved, the coalition could not decide upon a climate allowance to compensate for additional fuel pricing costs. The break-up of the coalition was not inevitable from a climate policy perspective, but it was a logical consequence.