UBA President Dirk Messner stated: “The emissions data for 2023 prove that our climate protection efforts, especially in the energy sector, are paying off. Unfortunately, some of the emissions savings are due to the recent crisis in our economy. What we need now is a modernisation of the German economy towards greater efficiency and more climate protection . The fact that forests have gone from being a carbon sink to a source of emissions is worrying. We urgently need to change course in this regard.”
Emissions by sectors
The strongest decline is recorded in the energy sector. Here, greenhouse gas emissions in 2023 fell by around 54.1 million tonnes of CO₂ equivalents or 21.1 percent compared to the previous year, which is due to the reduced use of fossil fuels to generate electricity and heat. This decline was particularly strong in the use of brown coal and hard coal as well as natural gas. The reasons for this include the significant reduction in coal-fired power generation, the consistent expansion of renewable energies and the switch from an electricity export surplus to an electricity import surplus with a simultaneous drop in energy demand. Other drivers were energy savings as a result of higher consumer prices and the mild weather conditions in the winter months.
In industry, emissions fell for the second year in a row to around 153 million tonnes of CO2 equivalents. This corresponds to a decrease of more than eleven million tonnes or seven percent compared to the previous year. Here too, the decrease is due to the reduced use of fossil fuels, particularly natural gas and hard coal. Key drivers of this trend were the negative economic development and increased production costs, which led to a decline in production.
In the building sector, emissions fell from 7.6 million tonnes of CO2 equivalents to around 103 million tonnes (minus 6.9 percent). The main drivers here were once again energy savings due to the mild weather conditions in the winter months of 2023 and comparatively high consumer prices. The significant expansion of heat pumps in 2023 also had a positive effect here, as less natural gas and heating oil were used, for example.
With a decrease of 2.5 million tonnes, the transport sector emitted around 145 million tonnes of CO 2 equivalents in 2023, around 1.7 percent less than in the previous year. The decrease is mainly due to lower diesel consumption by heavy commercial vehicles in road transport.
In agriculture, on the other hand, greenhouse gas emissions fell by around 0.9 million tonnes to 63 million tonnes of CO2 equivalents . The reduction is primarily the result of reductions in emissions from agricultural soils and fertiliser use.
The calculation of emissions from land use , land use change and forestry ( LULUCF ) included the results of the fourth German National Forest Inventory for the first time. The drought years from 2018 onwards in the inventory period 2018 to 2022 led to the large-scale dieback of productive spruce monocultures that were not resistant to climate change . Therefore, in contrast to before the drought , during this period the forest was no longer able to largely compensate for emissions from other sources, such as drained peat soils, and was even a source of CO2 itself.
Emissions by greenhouse gases
At 88.4 per cent, carbon dioxide (CO₂) continues to dominate greenhouse gas emissions in 2023 – largely from the combustion of fossil fuels. The remaining emissions are divided between methane (CH₄) at 6.7 per cent and nitrous oxide (N₂O) at just under 3.6 per cent, predominantly from the agricultural sector. Compared to 1990, emissions of carbon dioxide fell by 43.7 per cent, methane by 66.3 per cent and nitrous oxide by 53.9 per cent.
Fluorinated greenhouse gases (F-gases) account for only around 1.4 per cent of greenhouse gas emissions, but some of them have a very high global warming potential. Since 1995, fluorinated greenhouse gas emissions have fallen by 41.4 per cent.
Further information:
The categories listed in this text correspond to the classification system of the Climate Protection Act and not the classification system for international climate reporting. The total emissions are identical.
In accordance with the international reporting rules for greenhouse gas emissions, the entire time series since 1990 is always recalculated. This results in deviations in the data compared to the reporting of previous years.
A more detailed analysis of selected short and long-term drivers of combustion-related emissions can be found here .
The changes of minus 1.9 million tonnes of CO2 equivalents compared to the emissions data forecast for 2023 in accordance with the Climate Protection Act (see press release 11/2024 of 15 March 2024) are due to updates to the statistical information, which was only provisional at the time.
The changes of an extra 64.7 million tonnes of CO2 equivalents compared to the last reporting under the Climate Change Act in the LULUCF sector are the result of new data from the National Forest Inventory, as well as from the Agricultural Soil Condition Survey and peatland soil monitoring. Further details were provided by the Thünen Institute .
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