As of Tuesday, Austria will have gone 600 days without a climate protection act. This legislation is meant to regulate how much CO2 must be saved each year, and to set concrete, binding targets for the sectors concerned, such as transport, industry, and agriculture. However, the act expired in 2020 — and since then there has been little movement towards creating a successor law. Even months after negotiations began, no agreement is in sight, according to the climate protection spokespersons of the ÖVP and the Greens.
Negotiations are currently at a standstill — an agreement is unlikely, the climate protection spokespersons of the governing parties confirmed on Monday on Ö1's Morgenjournal. The Green climate protection spokesperson Lukas Hammer criticised the ÖVP for contributing very little, arguing that current crises are being used as justification to keep kicking the climate protection act down the road. At the same time, he noted, it's becoming clear "that we finally need to take climate protection as seriously as science is telling us to." His ÖVP counterpart Johannes Schmuckenschlager also confirmed the lack of progress: the climate protection act is "background noise, but not the most essential thing" and also "not the top priority." The aim is to create the necessary framework through other legislation, such as the Renewable Energy Expansion Act on expanding energy from renewable sources and a faster environmental impact assessment (EIA) process...
Read all about the development of the new climate protection act on orf.at.
