I. Title of the Best Practice

II. Overview of the Best Practice

At the moment the Federal Governments Climate Protection Programme contains more than 150 policies and measures for reducing emission of CO2, other greenhouse gases (CH4, N2O, CF4, C2F6, SF6, HFC's) and the ozone precursors NOx, CO, NMVOC and the N2O precursor NH3. In addition it is aimed at maintaining and expanding carbon sequestration in forest and wood products made out of wood (buildings, furnitures etc).

Hier bitte die im 4. IMA-Bericht enthaltene Liste der 150 Maßnahmen einfügen.
Achtung: die dort enthaltenen Maßnahmen zum Kernenergieeinsatz bitte streichen!!!
(Tabelle ist gespeichert auf ÖA-Diskette und kann von dort aus kopiert werden.)

In 1995, German trade and industry first made a declaration on precautionary climate protection measures which was put into practice on 27 March 1996. This voluntary commitment has since been accepted by five major German trade and industry associations and 14 associations of the processing industries.
The main statement declares that German trade and industry will voluntarily make special efforts to reduce, by 2005, their specific CO2 emissions or specific energy consumption by 20% compared to 1990 levels.

In addition, the German Government and German trade and industry agreed that the implementation of these pledges should be checked by a monitoring programme undertaken by an independent institute of economics. On 16 June 1999, the Rheinisch-Westƒälschen Institut für Wirtschaƒtsƒorschung (Rhein-Westphalian Institute for Economic Research) presented the second monitoring report.

This second report documents the companies' continued endeavours to achieve a rational use of energy and a reduction in CO2 emissions. Since 1990, a wide number of measures has allowed CO2 emissions from industry to be reduced by 45 million tonnes, and those from the electricity supply by 30 million tonnes. In percentage terms, German industry's CO2 emissions have therefore been reduced by 27% and those of the public electricity supply by 17% between 1990 and the end of 1998.

The second monitoring report proves the transparency and the high aims with which German trade and industry's climate protection declaration is being implemented. It reveals that individual associations have already fulfilled their pledge to a substantial degree.
This survey provides a good basis for consistent and continued development of German trade and industry's voluntary commitment declaration, in discussions between the German Government and trade and industry.

These discussions should, in particular, achieve:

• the extension of the target year from 2005 to the first commitment period 2008/2012 pursuant to the Kyoto Protocol
• an investigation into the possibilities for linking the climate protection declaration with project-related mechanisms of the Kyoto Protocol, such as "Clean Development Mechanism" and "Joint Implementation"
• the extension of the voluntary commitment declaration on CO2 to other greenhouse gases
• the further development of individual declarations in respect to the objectives and the promised measures
• the inclusion of further associations into the German trade and industry's voluntary commitment declaration
• the extension of the pledges from production to other branches of trade and industry involved in production.

In the course of the coming years the German Government and trade and industry will also study interim results regularly and will update and develop the implementation of the climate protection declaration.