Greenhouse gas emissions in Germany barely fell in 2025 and remained just 2% below the so-called annual limit set by the Climate Protection Act.
Emissions decreased by just 0.1% last year compared to the previous year, according to data from the German Environment Agency.
The country’s emissions in 2025 were equivalent to 649m tonnes of CO2, worse than those forecast by the expert group Agora Energiewende, which anticipated a 1.5% drop year-on-year.
In 2024, a more significant drop of 3.4% was recorded.
With total emissions of 648.9 million tonnes of CO2 equivalents, the country remained 12.7 million tonnes of CO2 equivalents - just 2% - below the so-called annual total emissions limit of 661.6 million tonnes of CO2 equivalents set by the Climate Protection Act for 2025.
Overall, greenhouse gas emissions in 2025 fell by only 0.9 million tonnes of CO2 equivalents and the transport and buildings sectors once again failed to meet targets set by the Climate Protection Act. Both sectors saw increases in emissions, which means the transport sector now exceeds the annual emission limit for 2025 by 29.5 million tonnes of CO2 equivalents and the buildings sector by 13.3 million tonnes of CO2 equivalents.
Germany’s environment minister, Carsten Schneider, criticised the lack of improvement at a conference in Berlin on Saturday.
The Social Democrat said that despite an increasing acceptance of electric cars and heat pumps, overall progress was “too slow” and urged citizens to accelerate their adoption of renewable power sources for both environmental and security reasons.
“What benefits the climate also increases our security and economic strength,” he said. “Every additional kilowatt-hour of renewable energy makes our country less dependent on oil and gas and our energy supply more secure.”
Despite this, both Schneider and the German Environment Agency remained optimistic that the country could achieve the 2030 climate target of reducing greenhouse gas emissions by 65%, compared with 1990.
Schneider welcomed the “growing enthusiasm for climate protection technologies” such as electric cars and heat pumps.
“And there are more newly approved wind power projects than ever before. This gives hope that progress will once again pick up speed in the years to come,” he said.
Emissions will have to decrease by an average of 42 million tonnes of CO2 equivalent per year from 2026 onward, more than 40 times the reduction recorded last year, to meet the 2030 reductions target.
In 2025, Germany’s greenhouse gas emissions were 48% below the level of the 1990 base year.
Schneider said it was “particularly urgent” to reduce emissions in the transport and building sectors – where emissions rose last year – to avoid the costly purchase of emission allowances from other EU member states or fines.
The pursuit of climate targets in Germany, a priority for the previous government of Social Democrat Olaf Scholz, appears less certain under the mandate of conservative chancellor, Friedrich Merz.
His government, which has been in power since May 2025, has instead advocated easing environmental standards.
Germany is Europe’s largest economy and its manufacturing powerhouse, and globally is behind only the economies of the United States and China in size.
• This article was amended on 17 March 2026. The headline and introduction of an earlier version said that Germany missed climate targets. In fact it narrowly met the overall target. More detail has been added to report on the data on greenhouse gas emissions and to note that the transport and buildings sectors once again failed to meet targets set by the Climate Protection Act.
