Together with the Alliance for Corporate Transparency and a number of other NGOs and think tanks, Germanwatch has commented on the proposals of the European Financial Reporting Advisory Group (EFRAG) in a press release. Germanwatch welcomes the adoption of the EU Sustainability Reporting Standards (ESRS), which EFRAG submitted to the European Commission this week. Although the ambition of the standards remains limited in some areas, they represent a significant improvement for companies and users of sustainability information and address the biggest issues in the quality and reliability of corporate reporting. Please find the press release below:

A ‘race to the top’ or global crawl? Despite global climate negotiations at COP27 and the G20 inching far too slowly towards the financial transformations we need to tackle climate change, country-level progress is being made. A common framework would help track that progress.

One of the three main goals of the Paris Agreement is to ‘make finance flows consistent with a pathway towards low greenhouse gas emissions and climate-resilient development’, as stated in Article 2.1c. This long-term goal recognises that, complementary to an increase in finance that supports climate action, there needs to be redirection of finance, both public and private, that locks countries into a future of low emissions and higher resilience. Given that Article 2.1c has yet to be fully operationalised, this case study examines the progress towards implementing it in Germany. It is a first attempt to provide a comprehensive analysis framework for the implementation of Article 2.1c.

The policy brief adresses two important questions:

Firstly, the role of climate litigation this far in adressing legal claims for loss and damage.

Secondly, the potential that climate litigation holds in redressing the claims of losses and damages.

The brief provides an analysis of how two arenas of legal action - negotiations and litigation - interact and how they can work together to provide a more robust legal basis for supporting issues of loss and damage.

The current energy crisis clearly demonstrates how the world remains dependent on fossil fuels. However, there is a number of countries that have a better standing than others. They took ambitious steps in climate mitigation and rapidly developed energy efficiency and renewable energies. Today, Germanwatch, NewClimate Institute and CAN International published the Climate Change Performance Index (CCPI) 2023, a ranking of the 59 largest emitters worldwide

Published annually since 2005, the Climate Change Performance Index (CCPI) is an independent monitoring tool for tracking the climate protection performance of 59 countries and the EU. It aims to enhance transparency in international climate politics and enables comparison of climate protection efforts and progress made by individual countries.

The Climate Change Performance Index (CCPI) compares 59 countries and the EU in the areas of Greenhouse Gas Emissions, Renewable Energies, Energy Use and Climate Policy, thus providing a comprehensive overview of the current efforts and progress of the countries analysed. This brochure explains the background and methodology of the CCPI.

Together with the NewClimate Institute and the Climate Action Network (CAN International), Germanwatch will present the "Climate Change Performance Index 2023" (CCPI) at the COP 27 in Sharm el Sheikh. For the 18th time in a row, the index compares the climate protection performance of the 59 largest CO2 emitters (plus the European Union as a whole).

The first Just Energy Transition Partnership (JETP) was announced with South Africa during the UN Climate Change Conference in Glasgow (COP26). Immediately after the announcement, other countries came forward and demonstrated their interest in establishing JETPs. By developing guiding principles for JETPs, we aim to help JETP stakeholders establish a matrix that they can use to assess JETP selection, design, implementation, and impact, in addition to providing civil society organisations with the tools they need to engage in meaningful policy advocacy and support their respective governments in developing new JETPs.

The availability of green hydrogen on an industrial scale and at affordable prices will determine the prospects of industry decarbonisation. What are necessary steps for the EU and other G7 nations to speed up a successful green hydrogen market? Germanwatch and StiftungKlimawirtschaft organised a discussion between stakeholders of civil society, industry, politics, and think tanks on this topic. In our policy brief, we summarise our three main recommendations.