Germany is keen to partner with India in a global alliance of countries established to bring together nations which want to reduce emissions with the understanding that every country may choose a different path to fulfil the objective. Sources said this may figure in discussions — as part of a focus on climate related matters — during the scheduled visit of German Chancellor Olaf Scholz to India later this month.
Jens Plötner, German Foreign and Security Policy Adviser to the Chancellor, who is in India ahead of the latter’s visit, told The Daily Guardian late on Monday that if “India joins the climate club given the aspirations of the Government of
Prime Minister Modi, that would be a great step.”
The Climate Club brings together G7 countries and has also drawn in Argentina and Chile as part of an open and cooperative international initiative floated by German Chancellor Scholz at the start of the year 2022 during Germany’s G7 Presidency.
Highlighting the expectations on Scholz’s visit regarding a fillip to energy cooperation amidst the challenges of energy supply triggered by the Russia-Ukraine conflict,
Plötner told The Daily Guardian that the prospects for this were both easy and difficult at the same time. “It is easy because we can do even more as new fields of industry emerge, especially in green tech. There is also a huge technological challenge. What is the role of hydrogen? In both these areas India should play a very important part,” Plotner said.
The Climate Club, as per the statement adopted by the G7 at its summit in Elmau in June 2022, aims to help accelerate decarbonisation of industries, further develop emissions reduction measures and counter the risk of carbon leakage.
“The Climate Club project is dear to our heart,” Plotner told The Daily Guardian. “The idea is to find a system to measure individually without asking everybody to do it exactly the same way because we understand that countries have different energy mixes and geographies and different climates. We have been able to gain support and membership from a number of countries outside the G7. We look forward to deepen the discussions on this ahead of the visit of the Chancellor,” Plotner added.
Asked about Germany’s efforts to deal with energy supply constraints in the wake of geopolitical tensions, the Chancellor’s Adviser told The Daily Guardian that adoption of a proactive policy has helped to mitigate a lot of the negative effects. “Germāny has disinvested totally from Russian energy and we have done that in record time, in less than a year. It has required tremendous effort and also quite some finances but we have managed. Energy is no longer a problem and I am optimistic that everyone’s needs will be catered for. Luckily due to a very solid Budget situation, we were able to subsidise the costs of energy for companies and for citizens,” Plotner informed The Daily Guardian. “The German economy is growing again,” he added.
Germany is India’s largest trading partner in Europe. The total bilateral trade between the two countries stood at USD 24.8 billion during financial year 2021–22, while it was valued at USD 21.76 billion in FY 2020–21. Additionally, Germany is the ninth largest investor in India, with cumulative foreign direct investment inflows of USD13.8 billion during the April 2000–September 2022 period. Key areas of German investment in India have been transportation, electrical equipment, and metallurgical industries, the services sector (insurance), chemicals, construction activity, trading, and automobiles. In 2020, over 1700 German companies created more than 400,000 jobs in India. At the same time, more than 200 Indian companies had registered offices in Germany, investing more than USD 7.07 billion in that country, as per industry sources.
The upcoming visit of the Chancellor is thus an opportunity for India and Germany to take stock of where they stand in the development of the bilateral cooperation and to identify further fields of cooperation, Plotner told journalists. “There is tremendous work going on but nothing is so good that it cannot be improved. So we want to focus on a few areas,” he indicated.
One of them is climate change. India and Germany are strong industrial nations and have complementarities but the challenge is to transform industries into green tech. Germany is keen to do this together with India and thus multiply the strength. This could also open up collaboration in renewable energy and hydrogen where India has potential for tremendous development in the future.
Another area of interest for Germany is cooperation is migration, implying legal migration and a legal workforce. With positive experiences of Indians coming to Germany to study and then to work or directly to work and a pool of very skilled and creative workforce, Germans are looking to foster this area of cooperation. Central to the growing momentum in the ties is that amidst a skyrocketing energy crisis and inflation, India stands out as a partner with strong belief in a rules based world order and a multilateral world system, with whom Germany can work towards making these values as a basis for a peaceful coexistence.
