In a special address at the World Economic Forum Annual Meeting 2023, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz reaffirmed his country’s goal of attaining climate neutrality, or net-zero greenhouse gas emissions, by 2045.
While the ongoing Russian invasion of Ukraine since February 2022 initially appeared to throw a spanner into German and European ambitions for the transition to renewables, Scholz sees Moscow’s aggression as only having accelerated that shift.
“Our transformation toward a climate-neutral economy – the fundamental task of our century – is currently taking on an entirely new dynamic,” said Scholz, “not in spite of, but because of, the Russian war”.
