Coalition deadlock leaves Austria’s climate ambitions in limbo
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Can’t be in breach of your climate law if you don’t have a climate law.
That’s the situation Austria finds itself in as the country marked 600 days without national climate legislation on Tuesday.
The conservative-Green coalition in Vienna vowed ambitious action upon taking office in early 2020, with a 2040 climate neutrality pledge — a decade ahead of the EU’s midcentury goal and five years ahead of neighboring Germany.
Two-and-a-half years later, that target remains an empty promise, experts say.
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Austria’s previous climate legislation, which governed emissions during the 2010s, expired at the end of 2020. A replacement was drafted in spring 2021 but never passed as the Greens and the conservative Austrian People’s Party (ÖVP) hit a negotiating deadlock.
This week, as parts of Austria saw flash floods when heavy rainfall hit soils desiccated by drought, politicians from both parties acknowledged that no progress was in sight.
The ÖVP has rejected efforts to give the legislation teeth — the new draft law would not only have set an emissions budget for Austria as well as sectoral goals, but also imposed automatic sanctions in the event of a breach.
The April 2021 draft envisaged a €100 fine per ton of CO2 in breach of annual and sectoral targets, with the penalty amount gradually increasing every year. Any breach would also have prompted an increase in fossil fuel taxes. The revenues were meant to finance a green investment fund.
ÖVP climate spokesperson Johannes Schmuckenschlager told local media that concrete measures like legislation to expand renewable energy were more important and that an overarching climate protection law was “not the top priority.”
The Greens, for their part, say no deal is better than a bad deal.
Lukas Hammer, the party’s climate spokesperson, said the governing parties could easily agree on a law resembling the expired legislation, which lacked enforcement mechanisms and was criticized as weak by experts.
“But we won’t settle for that,” he told POLITICO. “A climate protection law needs to have teeth to work.”
Distant dream of climate neutrality
Hammer stressed that the absence of a climate law didn’t mean no action had been taken, pointing to Austria’s so-called climate ticket — an annual travel-anywhere-you-like public transport pass working out to €3 a day — as an example.
The Alpine country boasts vast hydropower resources and generates more than 80 percent of its power from renewables, a target Germany hopes to achieve by 2030. Its overall energy mix, however, remains highly dependent on fossil fuels.
Last month, the Austrian Institute of Economic Research said that while the country’s emissions were on a downward trend, the 2040 target is a distant dream.
The researchers estimated that at its current pace, Austria would reach climate neutrality in 2065 or 2070 — a calculation that didn’t take into account the likely increase in energy emissions this winter when the country is expected to burn more coal and oil as the EU weans itself off of Russian gas supplies.
“If a tough climate protection law were to be passed, it would quickly become clear that this government is not on target,” said Reinhard Steurer, professor of climate policy at Vienna’s University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences.
Efforts to reduce emissions had been stepped up under the current government, he acknowledged. But in the absence of a “grand plan,” Austria is “muddling along” on climate action.
As a result, the 2040 target “is an illusion,” Steurer said. “There is no plan for it. The policy currently being made does not match the goal.”
‘Pure symbolism’
Austria isn’t the only EU country without a climate law. All member countries are bound by the bloc’s emissions reduction legislation and carbon pricing system, including the overall goal of climate neutrality by 2050.
But the Austrian government promised voters it would be more ambitious than Brussels, said Volker Hollenstein, head of policy at the environmental group WWF Austria.
“An ambitious climate law is a central component of climate policy that takes its own targets seriously,” Hollenstein added. Without such a law, including strong enforcement mechanisms, “it remains completely unclear how Austria intends to achieve its goals.”
As the EU prepares for a winter energy crunch, Vienna has also signed up to the bloc’s plan to reduce gas demand by 15 percent over the coming months.
But the country — which even managed to increase its dependence on Russian gas from 80 percent to 87 percent since the invasion of Ukraine — also doesn’t yet have much of a plan for cutting consumption.
Besides the climate law, Austria’s energy efficiency legislation also expired at the end of 2020. The coalition hasn’t managed to agree on a replacement for that, either.
Given the ÖVP’s reluctance, some have called on the Greens to quit the coalition. Hammer says that would play into the conservatives’ hands.
“We’ve pushed through other climate measures in this coalition, it’s never been easy,” he said. “In climate politics, I’m used to the fact that you have to fight. I will certainly not do the ÖVP the favor of getting out of their way.”
The ÖVP and its climate spokesman did not respond to requests for comment. The conservative party has taken a nosedive in the polls in recent months, but the next election won’t be until 2024.
Steurer, the climate policy professor, said both parties were engaging in a game of pretend over the 2040 target.
“The 2040 goal is basically pure symbolism,” he said. “It is not enshrined anywhere — there is no plan for it, no path toward it, no binding commitment.”
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