From KlimaNachrichten

By Fritz Vahrenholt

Dear Ladies and Gentlemen,

the media report the third warmest July ever, but the graph above shows: the global mean temperature is falling rapidly this year. The deviation from the long-term average of satellite measurements is now 0.36 degrees Celsius.

The fundamental differences in CO2 policy in the USA and Germany 

In the USA, it has been clear since Obama took office in 2009 that CO2 emissions should be reduced for climate protection reasons, but there has never been a majority in the Senate and Congress for such a law. Even Democratic senators from the coal and automotive states (such as Senator Joe Manchin from the coal state of West Virginia) refused to agree to such interventions. So Obama’s administration came up with a trick: the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) added CO2 to the list of pollutants to be regulated in the Clean Air Act, knowing full well that CO2 is not dangerous to health, but on the contrary is an indispensable basis for life on earth. The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) declared CO2 a pollutant (!) through an “endangering finding” by constructing: CO2 warms the earth and thus endangers the health of Americans. On this basis, numerous regulations have been issued by the authority to reduce CO2 emissions from motor vehicles, trucks, coal-fired power plants and industrial plants.

On Day 1 of the presidency on January 22, 2025, President Trump not only declared his withdrawal from the Paris Agreement but also instructed the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to review the “endangering finding”. On March 12, the new EPA chief Lee Zeldin announced that the “endagering finding” is to be abolished because the declaration of CO2 as a pollutant has cost American consumers 1000 billion US dollars since 2009 and a health hazard from CO2 would not be recognizable. The first facilitations for the automotive industry have been published and will come into force after appropriate hearings. It can be assumed that the new regulations will end up before the Supreme Court, the highest court in the USA. There is now a 6:3 conservative majority there, so it can be assumed that the new regulations will last.
Now we understand why Porsche has decided to make a U-turn in its model policy and is investing in internal combustion engines again – even after 2035, the European end date for combustion vehicles in Europe. On June 6, Porsche confirmed plans to relocate the final assembly of its vehicles to the USA. The USA is Porsche’s most important sales market.

While the USA is abandoning discrimination against processes and plants containing CO2, zero CO2 emissions by 2045 have been solidified in Germany: On March 22, even the constitution (Art. 143h) was amended by a red-green-black majority, according to which climate neutrality is to be achieved by 2045 and €100 billion in special debt can be taken on to accelerate the phase-out of CO2. A change by the Federal Constitutional Court is not to be expected, as the Federal Constitutional Court has already made a highly dubious decision in 2021 (see Vahrenholt/Lüning Incontestable), according to which CO2 emissions in Germany are to be reduced to zero by 2050. Worse still, the candidates to be nominated by the SPD for the Federal Constitutional Court are selected primarily on the basis of whether they have a green climate activist orientation. This one-sided climate policy orientation of the SPD is now meeting with considerable resistance among the industrial workforce. On July 3, East German works councils sent an incendiary letter to the federal government, which can hardly describe the failure of German energy policy better.

“Dear Mr. Chancellor,

We are in the worst economic crisis since the Second World War. Last year alone, at least 100,000 industrial jobs were cut without replacement. The political promises of the last federal government of a “green economic miracle” are just smoke and mirrors. The reality is that never before have so many good jobs been threatened as they are today.
In Germany alone, well over a million people work in energy-intensive industries – most of them in the IGBCE and IG Metall sectors. German energy policy in particular has become one of the most dangerous locational and economic risks.
If the energy transition is an open-heart operation on our economy, as is sometimes said, then this operation has so far failed thoroughly. We have to realize: The patient is in danger of dying on the operating table…
The double phase-out of nuclear energy and coal has made Germany dependent on unreliable solar and wind power and expensive gas imports. We are footing the bill with the highest electricity prices in Europe. Never before has our power supply been so expensive and insecure. These high electricity prices are not only socially unjust, they are now also threatening our economy – and thus our prosperity and social peace.”

The SPD showed no reaction. What kind of SPD leadership is it that leaves such an appeal by East German works councils cold?

While CO2 regulations are being lifted in the USA, Germany continues to go the opposite way. The Merz coalition has reaffirmed its commitment to the goal of climate neutrality by 2045, which was introduced by the Merkel government in 2021 and continued by the traffic light government. While the American president has announced the goal of quadrupling nuclear energy production in 25 years, and has once again made it possible to increase the use of electricity from coal and gas power plants in order to satisfy the enormously growing electricity demand of industry and data centers, the SPD has managed to make the word nuclear energy no longer even mention in the coalition agreement: No research, no reactivation of existing nuclear power plants, no new nuclear technology in Germany. On the other hand, according to the will of the CDU and SPD, final energy consumption is to be reduced by 45% by 2045. This means massive deindustrialization and a dramatic loss of prosperity. German politics lacks an understanding of the importance of energy for economic growth and for people’s lives. US Energy Secretary Chris Wright expresses what German politicians still have to learn: “Energy is the engine for everything we do. For everything. Energy is not just one economic sector, but it enables all other sectors. Energy is life.”

CO2 emissions trading leads to deindustrialization

In the USA, there is no burden on CO2 emissions from emission certificates, apart from individual country regulations in California and Oregon. In the USA, this leads to industrial electricity prices of 3-4 €ct/kwh. In Europe, every tonne of CO2 emitted by power plants, industrial plants, air traffic, shipping or private households is charged with the cost of a CO2 emission certificate. For industry, this is currently about 70-80 €/t CO2, for households 55 €/t CO2. The money that is ripped off from citizens and industry ends up in the Climate Transformation Fund. This fund is currently being used to finance solar and wind energy to the tune of €20 billion when exchange electricity prices fall below the fixed feed-in tariff – almost every day at lunchtime in summer. This overproduction of electricity, which no one can use, is subsidized in this way with billions, even if it is given away abroad.

The European certificate trade with CO2, which does not exist in the USA or China, makes our electricity massively more expensive. After the phase-out of nuclear energy, more coal-fired power plants and gas-fired power plants will have to step in, for example at night when there is no sun or on 120 days when there is hardly any wind. In the next graphic, we can see the fatal impact of CO2 certificates on the generation costs of coal and gas electricity.

This makes CO2 certificates the main cause of Germany’s industrial electricity prices, which are two to three times higher than those of the USA. In addition, there are the grid costs due to the expansion of renewable energies of several hundred billion euros.
The following example shows the effects of the increased industrial electricity prices for companies. Let’s take a product from the basic industry with an energy cost share of 10%. Since the energy costs (gas is also much cheaper in the USA) are three times as high as production in the USA, the product from Germany is 20% more expensive (30-10%) How long can the company bear this additional burden? Not for very long, as we can see from the decline in energy-intensive production in Germany since 2021.

The gap between competitive electricity and gas prices in the USA and Germany will continue to widen. It takes little imagination to realize that the USA is on the verge of reindustrialization, and that Germany can expect a crash of its industry in view of an unwavering climate policy. The coalition agreement between the CDU and SPD continues to promote the death of German industry.

After all, it is not only the CO2 certificate trade that has an impact on industry and society. In addition to certificate trading, the red-green-black planned economy has developed a wealth of individual regulations. The CO2 fleet limit value for cars is regulated, completely unnecessary subsidies to renewable energies are distributed in the billions (the sun doesn’t send an invoice) or solar roofs or heat pump obligations are prescribed. Prof. Manuel Frondel has thankfully calculated what these individual planned economy regulations cost us: The CO2 emission standard for new vehicles costs 950 €/t CO2, EEG subsidies 150 €/t CO2, coal phase-out 464 €/t CO2, i.e. a multiple of the European certificate price of about 70-80 €/tCO2.

What citizens don’t know is that these additional costs in the electricity sector, which Germany proudly burdens itself with, do not reduce a single ton of CO2 at EU level. The fact that Germany saves more CO2 than would be necessary on the basis of the European certificate regulation releases certificates that are used by other companies in Europe to be able to emit more CO2. This means that we have superfluous expenditure in Germany in the billions with a CO2 effect of zero.

After the CO2 turnaround in the USA, the Paris Agreement is a waste of paper

The U.S. emits about 13% of the world’s CO2 emissions. With the US withdrawing from the Paris Agreement, the question arises as to who will be left to comply with the Paris Agreement. The agreement exempts developing countries from any CO2 reduction. China, the new economic superpower, is considered a developing country according to UN rules. Russia is not participating, nor are the USA and Argentina. Only the industrialised countries EU, Canada, South Korea, Australia, Japan, New Zealand and England have committed themselves to reducing CO2 emissions. The EU accounts for 6.4% of global CO2 emissions, while the rest of the industrialised countries account for 7.1% of CO2 emissions. 86.5% of global CO2 emissions can therefore remain unchanged after the Paris Agreement or, as in the case of China and India, continue to grow undisturbed. Germany wants to save 500 million tons of CO2 by 2045. This corresponds to the growth of CO2 emissions in India and China in two years. On Germany’s path to zero CO2 emissions in 2045, all production will leave Germany. If she grows up in the USA or China, she increases CO2 emissions there to 2 times (USA) or 4 times (China), as the next chart shows.

German policy follows selective climate science

Germany and Europe follows the climate science orchestrated by the UN, in which critics with differing findings about the importance of CO2 for climate change are excluded. For the first time, the USA is now giving a voice to scientists who are critical of UN climate science. It is the merit of Donald Trump and his Secretary of Energy to give space to the suppressed positions of scientists. Already in his first term in office, Trump wanted to get critics and alarmists to a dispute: A RED team of critics was to discuss with a BLUE team of alarmists. The alarmist UN mainstream science refused: You don’t argue with dissidents. In March 2025, US Secretary of Energy Chris Wright commissioned an independent commission of experts to critically assess current climate science. The scientists Prof. Judith Curry, Prof. Ross McKitrick, Prof. John Christy, Dr. Steven Koonin, Dr. Roy Spencer, who were excluded from the UN, delivered this report at the end of July.

The report is worth reading and will have far-reaching consequences for climate policy worldwide. Of course, the scientists confirm a warming of the last 150 years. Of course, the scientists attest that CO2 has a certain warming effect. However, they also show that the models that see CO2 alone as the cause of the warming of the last 150 years are unsuitable, as they do not reasonably reflect the causes of the temperature development of the last 25 years. Because the warming of the last 25 years is mainly due to increased direct solar radiation from the clouds and less to the greenhouse effect of CO2. (p.91)

Above all, the scientists point to the positive effects of CO2, which has led to a greener earth with clearly positive consequences for the world’s food situation. And you also clear up the recurring narratives of the alleged increase in droughts, heavy rainfall events, hurricanes, tornadoes, forest fires, etc. Contrary to most media reports, their data do not show an increase in extreme events. The report is available on the web. The US Secretary of Energy has asked the scientific community to comment. A German translation of the summary can be found here.

Anyone who sees Germany crashing as a result of the green-red-black climate policy and wants to change this must have read this report. After reading the 150 pages, you feel better and are excellently prepared against half-truths, scandals and fear-mongering, as they are spread every day by ZDF, ARD, Spiegel, FAZ, Süddeutsche and dpa.

Sincerely,

Fritz Vahrenholt