Not enough voters in Berlin supported a push to make the German capital carbon neutral by 2030, the preliminary outcome of a referendum held on Sunday showed.
Even though the majority appeared to have voted in favor of more ambitious climate targets, the number of votes was not enough for the referendum to pass, state election officials said.
Had it been approved the proposal would have set the city’s government a legally binding target to achieve climate neutrality in seven years.
Berlin, like Germany as a whole, currently aims for a 95% reduction in net carbon dioxide emissions by 2045, compared with 1990 levels.
Climate activists from the group called Klimaneustart Berlin (Climate Reset Berlin), who prompted the vote, said the target is too far in the future to prevent global warming from exceeding 1.5 degrees Celsius.
At least 80% of Berlin’s energy, however, comes from fossil fuel sources.
Few lawmakers in Berlin’s state parliament, the Senate, believed seven years is enough to make the transition to renewable energy and were concerned about the short-term costs the legally binding deadline would have incurred.
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.
Giffey said earlier this week while it was important to take the issue forward, it would not “be possible for Berlin to be climate neutral by 2030.” “People have to be told this clearly: everything else is nonsense.”
lo/kb (AP, dpa, Reuters)
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