Germany wants to stop using fossil fuels in the energy sector by 2045 at the latest, with plans for how to do that set out in the country’s transition roadmap published today on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly. 

The blueprint focuses on electrifying transport, home heating and industry, while gradually replacing fossil fuel power generation with renewables. Renewables supplied about 55% of Germany’s electricity last year and the government wants that to reach at least 80% by 2030.

All coal-fired power stations – which generated almost a quarter of Germany’s electricity last year – must close by 2038 at the latest. That deadline has been set in German law since 2020, but the roadmap says the government is exploring the possibility of bringing the end date forward to 2035.

New gas-fired plants that receive state funding must be “hydrogen-ready” and run on climate-neutral fuels by 2045. The roadmap doesn’t specify what those fuels are but they generally include biofuels and green hydrogen. 

At the same time, Berlin wants to install 2,000 more wind turbines and reduce the need for power plants by boosting the use of batteries.

At the UN General Assembly in New York, Secretary-General António Guterres urged all countries to submit national roadmaps to end the consumption and production of fossil fuels with “clear timelines and protection for affected workers and communities”.

A group of around 80 countries led a failed push at last year’s COP30 in Belém to create a global roadmap on transitioning away from fossil fuels. While the initiative was not adopted in the summit, some countries like France and the Netherlands opted for moving forward with their own national plans.

Subsidies for EVs and heat pumps

To cut reliance on petrol for transport, the German government says it will make available 2.8 billion euros to subsidise the cost of buying electric vehicles for lower and middle income households.

Official projections suggest that by 2035 every new car sold in Germany will be electric, according to the document. Freight, shipping and aviation are expected to shift to a mix of electric vehicles, “sustainable” biofuels and hydrogen-based fuels. 

For homes, the roadmap relies mainly on replacing gas and oil boilers with heat pumps, backed by state subsidies. Anyone who installs a new gas or oil heating system will have to use a rising share of “climate-neutral fuels” from 2029, reaching 60% by 2040. A proposed quota would require fuel suppliers to switch entirely to climate-neutral heating fuels from 2045.

Industry is expected to decarbonise by switching to electricity and hydrogen, becoming more energy efficient, and capturing carbon where emissions are hard to avoid.

Environment minister Carsten Schneider said the roadmap doesn’t just represent a climate strategy, but also an economic policy strategy. “The money we currently spend on importing oil and gas will increasingly flow into local value creation,” he added in a written statement. “Moving away from fossil fuels combines independence, affordability, and climate protection”.

In 2024, Germany spent about 76 billion euros to import fossil fuels. Around two-thirds of that went on oil and petroleum products, and the rest on gas and coal.

Campaigners call for faster phase out

Reactions to the roadmap from analysts and campaigners have been mixed, both praising the country’s initiative for launching this plan voluntarily but also calling for an even faster fossil fuel phase out.

Jennifer Morgan, former German climate envoy, said that, while the roadmap is a “welcome step”, to truly deliver the strategy must be backed by “a faster, more deliberate, and just phase-out paired with the rollout of green electrification”.

Laurie Van Der Burg, public finance lead at campaigning group Oil Change International, said Germany deserves credit for publishing the roadmap, but its efforts are “not commensurate with the reality of the crisis, or its responsibility as a wealthy, historic emitter”. She urged Germany to end its fossil fuel finance, strengthen the roadmap and redirect public money toward renewable energy.

Germany is the third European country to set out a national fossil fuel transition roadmap following France and the Netherlands. France has set end dates for coal (2030), oil (2045) and gas (2050), though its plan mostly brings existing policies together. The Dutch government has failed to set a binding end date for the country’s fossil fuel production and use, only indicating that should be “minimised” by 2050. 

Linda Kalcher, executive director at Strategic Perspectives, said the targets in the three national roadmaps still fall short of what is needed to improve energy security, but they still send a powerful message to fossil fuel exports: “a huge share of the European market is planning for a future in which demand for coal, oil and gas declines”.

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Germany plans to end use of fossil fuels in energy sector by 2045

UN chief António Guterres called on countries to break their dependency on fossil fuels at a high-level event on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly on Wednesday, where COP31 presidents Türkiye and Australia set the tone for November’s climate summit.

As the world faces extreme climate impacts turbocharged by a “super El Niño” event and fossil fuel prices soar amid conflict in the Middle East, Guterres said reliance on fossil fuels “wreaks havoc”, and urged governments to boost their renewable energy capacity as a way out.

“Doubling down on oil and gas will only lock in vulnerability for decades. Fortunately, we have a way out. Because the crisis is accelerating – but so are the solutions,” he said.

Reiterating a point made in his farewell speech to the UN General Assembly on Tuesday, Guterres urged all countries to submit “credible” national roadmaps to end their production and consumption of coal, oil and gas – “with clear timelines”.

“The G20, responsible for 80 percent of global emissions, must lead. The principle of common but differentiated responsibilities must apply. But all countries must raise their ambition,” he added.

At last year’s COP30 climate summit in Belém, a group of some 80 governments led a failed push to develop a global roadmap to transition away from fossil fuels. Brazil instead will draft a voluntary report to be presented this year ahead of COP31, incorporating views from a range of countries and organisations.

Governments first agreed to transition away from fossil fuels in energy systems at COP28 in Dubai in 2023, but have since been unable to agree at UN climate talks on how to move forward with that commitment, as efforts to do so have been effectively blocked by large fossil fuel-producing countries.

The UN chief urged the world to match the accelerating climate crisis “with accelerating action”, by matching the revolution in clean energy with a revolution in finance and rising impacts with rising protection.

“I ask you all to deliver – then over-deliver,” he said. “We are the first generation with the tools to end the fossil fuel age – and the last who can avert climate catastrophe.”

UN launches country platforms to support mineral-rich nations

More than two years after a UN panel of experts called for justice and equity to underpin the development of the mineral supply chains needed for the energy transition, the UN is starting to follow up with concrete action.

On Wednesday, UN chief António Guterres announced that six countries – Guinea, Indonesia, Madagascar, Nigeria, Zambia and Zimbabwe – will be the first to receive dedicated support to turn their mineral wealth into engines for sustainable industrialisation, job creation and revenue generation so that it “drives local development, with added value remaining there”.

The country support mechanism, launched at the UN Climate Summit, will identify what individual recipient countries need to improve mineral governance, boost value addition and protect environmental and human rights and respond with coordinated technical assistance and capacity building from across the UN system.

Zambia’s Minister of Foreign Affairs Mulambo Haimbe said the initiative will support the country’s ambition “not simply to produce more, but to create greater value at home through investment, value addition, industrialisation and jobs”.

Booming demand for minerals such as copper, lithium, cobalt, nickel and rare earths that are needed to build the equipment the world needs to move away from fossil fuels offer real development opportunities for the countries that hold them. But communities living near extraction sites often shoulder most of the costs while seeing few of the benefits.

The UN panel’s recommendations set out a vision for more just and sustainable mineral value chains. But implementation has been slow to follow.

Suneeta Kaimal, president and CEO of the Natural Resource Governance Institute, welcomed the announcement of a delivery initiative, adding that to succeed it needs to be truly driven by local stakeholders.

The new support mechanism “could enable countries to lead on the design of strategies, safeguards and policies that will allow them to shift from rule-takers to rule-shapers and unlock prosperity for all their people”, she said.

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UN SUMMIT LIVE: UN chief says world has tools to end the fossil fuel age

The UN has rallied behind plans to accelerate investment in electricity infrastructure in Africa and Southeast Asia, boosting efforts to tackle one of the biggest bottlenecks holding back the shift to clean energy.

UN boss António Guterres launched the Global Grids Accelerator on the sidelines of the UN Climate Summit in New York on Wednesday. The initiative aims to turn government plans to expand and modernise grids into investment-ready projects and bring together the expertise, finance and support needed to build them.

Guterres said the accelerator will help countries build “the arteries of the energy transition” to expand energy access, strengthen energy security and power growth in developing countries.

The initiative will not create a new financing institution, the UN said, and no additional funding to boost grid upgrades was announced. Instead, it will act as a broker by bringing together UN agencies, development banks, investors and utilities around grid priorities identified by governments.

Renewable energy deployment is happening at record speed but the infrastructure required to move clean electricity from where it is generated to consumers is not keeping pace. As a result, record amounts of green electricity that cannot be absorbed by the grid are being wasted.

In addition, more than 2,500 GW of renewable projects – nearly twice the electricity generation capacity of the US – are currently stuck in queues worldwide, waiting to connect to the grid, according to the International Energy Agency (IEA).

Grid bottlenecks

To meet global climate goals and cut emissions from fossil fuels, electricity demand needs to grow orders of magnitude faster in the next decade than it did in the last. The COP31 presidency has called on governments to endorse a pledge to raise electricity’s share of final energy consumption from 23% today to 35% by 2035.

Grids are essential to support this surge in electricity demand as sectors such as transport, heating and cooling electrify.

The lack of adequate infrastructure to transport electricity can have a major negative impact on economic development by delaying new power generation, slowing down efforts to expand access to electricity and hampering industrial growth.

In contrast, strong grids can help countries connect their renewable energy potential to surging power demand, strengthen energy security and support new industries and job creation.

Meeting national climate goals requires adding or refurbishing more than 80 million kilometres of grids by 2040 – equivalent to roughly the size of today’s entire global network, according to the IEA. Technologies can also help increase the capacity of existing grid infrastructure. The watchdog estimates that annual grid investments need to increase by around 50% by 2030 to meet growing electricity demand.

The IEA has warned that the mismatch between the time it takes to build new power grids – 5 to 15 years – and the much faster buildout of renewable projects, EV charging infrastructure or data centres, makes upgrading grids an urgent task to prevent slowing down the energy transition.

Matching expertise and finance to projects

At COP29 in 2024, more than 60 countries committed to collectively build more than 25 million kilometres of additional grid infrastructure by 2030.

But a key barrier is turning long-term and often complex plans to overhaul electricity infrastructure into viable projects that can be matched to funding.

The accelerator aims to bring together expertise from across the UN system to support countries navigate this fragmented landscape and access the financing they need.

In Africa, the accelerator will focus on delivering national priorities to expand grid infrastructure and regional interconnections to expand access to reliable and affordable electricity. It will build on existing initiatives such as Mission 300, which aims to connect 300 million Africans to electricity by 2030.

In Southeast Asia, the accelerator will support initiatives such as the ASEAN Power Grid, which aims to connect different countries’ electricity networks and enable cross-border power trading to meet growing power demand and boost energy security.

Across the region, inadequate grids are threatening billions of dollars in clean energy investment. The lack of grid capacity is part of the reason about 50% to 60% of renewable energy projects in Vietnam, Thailand and Indonesia were cancelled or stalled between 2021 and 2025.

Alexander De Croo, the administrator of UNDP, said making grids projects investable must be a priority, noting that grids require a big upfront investment but deliver “a stable return over the long-term”.

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UN backs push to upgrade grids slowing clean power uptake in Africa and Southeast Asia