In February, Germany held an election that had many echoes of the one the United States held in November. Voters were incensed with inflation — especially electricity prices, which surged 80 percent after Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022 and never returned to normal. Right-wing parties channeled that fury toward the incumbent government’s green policies, including the pioneering Energiewende decarbonization plan that has made renewable energy more than half of the electricity Germans use today.
While President Donald Trump has promised to stifle clean energy and bring a fossil fuel renaissance to the United States, Germany isn’t going that route. On Tuesday, Friedrich Merz of the Christian Democratic Union was sworn in as chancellor, leading a new conservative government in Berlin. The party has laid out policies that decelerate, but don’t reverse, the country’s blistering renewables build-out while easing up on the decarbonization push in buildings and industry.
The goal: quickly reduce bills for households and businesses and reinvigorate the economy. Merz says Ger... Read more
