As you know, we’ve got an important visitor here in the city at the moment.

That’s why I’m rushing from one appointment to the next.

These are turbulent times in the truest sense of the word. That’s why the US President’s most recent visit was postponed after all.

There are, fortunately, no storms at the moment, neither here nor in the US.

But that doesn’t mean that there aren’t any such disasters around the world each and every day.

Even if we scarcely report on them, because they have, unfortunately, become a sad fact of life. We have seen for years, and especially in this day and age, that the climate crisis doesn’t keep to any roadmap, to any playbook or to any election campaign planning.

With this in mind, I’d like to thank you for making it possible for us to hold our COP briefing here in the Weltsaal, with quite a bit of time to go before our elections and not long before the US elections.

Together with the Stiftung KlimaWirtschaft, with the German Climate Consortium and with so many experts here, with so many colleagues from other ministries.

And, of course, with my State Secretary Jennifer Morgan and a host of international guests. A warm welcome to you all.

We know that flooding and landslides in Nepal have displaced thousands and claimed the lives of over 200 people.

But this is barely even mentioned in the newspapers. Because this has, unfortunately, become a sad fact of everyday life.

Over 13,000 forest fires in the Amazon rainforest – the highest number for 20 years.

Nevertheless, this somehow seems to have passed us by.

Floods in Brazil, in Rio Grande do Sul, which displaced over 400,000 people in June.

In view of the terrible suffering in the Middle East, the media here have mainly reported on the war and crises in our immediate neighbourhood.

We all took note of Hurricane Milton, not least because the US President cancelled his state visit because of it.

One hundred thousand people had to flee their homes, with damage running to in excess of 50 billion US dollars.

That shows not only how complex, how normal the climate crisis has unfortunately become, how much suffering it causes.

But it also shows, and I’d like to focus on this today, that this climate crisis doesn’t stop even in the face of the richest, of the strongest military powers of this world. That, even in the richest economies, the damage can be so great that it can have an impact that can barely be overlooked on the domestic stage.

But as terrible as all of this is, I believe that it’s also an enormous opportunity.

I’m not only saying this because I so often think right now that the glass must somehow be half full and yet, time and again, I struggle to see an opportunity myself and I am close to giving in to despair.

But because I think it’s important, precisely since the climate crisis is having such a great impact and creating all these challenges now, that we don’t forget what we have achieved. That we remember we have actually achieved much more than we could have imagined ten years ago.

Many of you, myself included, were at the Climate Change Conference in Paris in 2015. And a few people are acquainted with my joke already, but I think it’s quite fitting.

We got into a bit of an argument in Dubai last year – my experts, who came over from the Federal Ministry of the Environment to the Federal Foreign Office, and myself.

Whether the words “renewable energies” appear once or twice in the final Paris agreement and whether it was the main text or the accompanying decision.

Norbert Gorissen was right as usual, of course. And it was in the preamble of the agreement itself.

But the fact that we ourselves no longer know this shows that this is actually quite incredible. A UN climate text in which “renewable energies” only appears once.

And I put it this way because, at the time, no one could have imagined where we are today,

that 85 percent of new power plants – and not just in Germany, which was at the vanguard of this effort at the time – but around the world, are no longer powered by fossil fuels, but by renewable energies.

And not because we’ve all suddenly become climate activists, play an active role in environmental organisations or support my party, the Greens.

But rather because a large number of investors said that they wouldn’t invest otherwise.

And I believe that this is the very biggest opportunity in these times of crisis, this is what we have managed together.

The fact that climate policy is no longer purely environment policy.

In election campaign parlance, we’d say that it’s no longer polar bears that are on posters, but power plants.

Because they create jobs.

That the climate crisis – and this has been the cornerstone of our coalition government – is taken into consideration across all of the ministries.

This is why we’re pursuing climate foreign policy at the Federal Foreign Office. Why climate industry policy is being pursued at the Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Climate Action. Why climate policy is being pursued at the Environment Ministry with a view to the impacts of biodiversity and water protection. Why climate policy is being pursued at the Federal Ministry of Food and Agriculture to work towards food security. Why climate protection policy is being pursued at the Defence Ministry to work towards security.

And, fortunately, not only we, but many other countries around the world, have understood this.

That the climate crisis is not only the biggest security threat, but also the biggest security opportunity.

We had a PowerPoint presentation at the Berlin Climate and Security Conference that made it clear that, in a world that is four degrees warmer, a further 1.8 billion people would be impacted by food insecurity.

And if people no longer have anything to eat where they live, then they flee their homes.

In a world that’s two degrees warmer, the figure would be an additional 189 million compared to today. What a difference in numbers ‑ an additional 189 million people affected by food insecurity as compared to 1.8 billion people – with a difference in temperature of two degrees.

To my mind, this makes it clear why these efforts are so important. If we get our climate policy right, we can stabilise the world again, a world that has been thrown out of kilter by these hurricanes and floods.

And that’s what I’d like to focus on a bit today, because it also leads us to Baku.

In Baku, of course, we’ll also be discussing what we in the EU have set out to achieve, namely reduction targets. I’ll come back to this at the end of my speech; we’re at a specialist conference after all.

But that’s now something that’s taken as read.

In my view, the main priority in Baku will be to see whether we can achieve the unique progress that we achieved in Dubai.

That this is no longer about whether you come from a G7 country or a G77 country. Rather, the decisive question when we negotiate texts is whether you’re on the side that says: we want to get a grip on this crisis together and strengthen our rules-based international order in the process.

Or whether we think only at the national level, in our own interests, in the very short term, also because we want to destroy the rules-based international order.

And we’ve seen time and again in recent years that there’s an alliance on this issue, across all topics.

We saw this in Dubai, where around 130 countries in the end said: we’re doing this now and we want this now and we won’t leave until we’ve done this. That’s what we said at every climate conference before that: we won’t leave until we’ve done this.

But that’s the point we had reached there – we wanted to bring an end to our world of fossil fuels.

And no one cared whether a country that influences the G77 behind the scenes, or a country with a strong industrial policy was in favour of this. But rather, we asked ourselves how 130 countries can come up with a result at the end of the day that everyone can get behind.

And we had a very similar situation a few weeks ago in New York, with respect to the United Nations when the focus was on creating a Pact for the Future in New York at the Secretary-General’s behest.

A similar group came together once again. It was a bit bigger than those 130 countries. Around 170 countries also said that so much divides us. Some are part of the G20 while others are developing countries.

But the core message was that we want to work together to defend the international, rules-based order.

We can see that the climate crisis is our biggest threat.

And we want to lift people out of poverty.

Seventeen countries wanted to prevent this, and you can guess which ones they were.

But they didn’t manage. And we now want to take this achievement to Baku. To a place that isn’t a walk in the park. There are a few other issues that we could, or indeed we must, discuss with regard to war and peace.

That will be our task for Baku as this isn’t just about climate policy, but because it’s also about major geopolitical issues.

I’ve already mentioned that the issue of food security is one of the most important issues with regard to climate protection.

The same goes for the climate crisis as a factor that exacerbates conflicts. We have witnessed this again in Somalia recently, following the longest drought in the country’s history. Then came the big floods and food became scarce. So, once again, there’s the question of food security.

And it’s no coincidence that, at this very moment, Islamist-driven militias, are suddenly levying taxes in the regions where they’re in charge, saying that those who cannot collect or pay their taxes must fight in the militia.

This is the clearest possible illustration of the fact that, if we don’t get a grip on this threat to food security, the climate crisis, then we won’t get a grip on the danger of extremism, of regional conflicts in which people are abused in a targeted manner because they have no choice if they want to survive.

We’re seeing the same thing in the context of a less dramatic but equally potent geopolitical dependency. With small island states, especially in the Pacific. There are small states that have long felt abandoned to their fate with the climate crisis. Because people said – not me, of course, but it was often the prevailing opinion at climate conferences – “ah well, whether an island state goes under or not isn’t the biggest geopolitical challenge on our plate right now.”

But what becomes of these island states can become a very, very big geopolitical question. If you look at where these islands are actually located. In the neighbourhood of New Zealand and Australia, which we visited a few months ago. I was told by the intelligence services of some of these countries on the ground:

“Look at this archipelago here. Then look at where the US is, where we are and where Pearl Harbor is.”

And then you suddenly think, aha, that explains Tuvalu, yes.

You recall what you read in the newspaper at some point beforehand, that China is now launching major infrastructure projects in a number of Pacific island states.

And then you look at the archipelago and think, yes, that’s true. A few years ago, a number of these island states said that they urgently needed support. And not for climate protection, to phase out of fossil fuels, but for adaptation, for loss and damage. Because otherwise they would no longer be able to keep their land from going under.

In retrospect, it has to be said that perhaps we didn’t realise early enough either that this has now become a geopolitical issue.

Fortunately, I can say on behalf of Germany, and not in a self-congratulatory way on behalf of this Federal Government or this Foreign Minister, that Germany has always maintained, for climate policy reasons, and also for security policy reasons, that we cannot simply say: you’re so far away; these aren’t our concerns.

But that we enjoy so much trust in the region that we can talk to the island nations.

We can encourage them to perhaps keep an eye on whether each and every infrastructure project there is really a project supporting the people in the region. Whether each and every warehouse for humanitarian aid actually contains humanitarian aid. Or whether the police who are brought in to protect the warehouses are perhaps not intended to be deployed to tackle hurricanes, but for completely different purposes.

And there’s this joined-up thinking again. You could say that all of this is quite terrible and quite awful.

But I think this also presents us with a great opportunity. At any rate, it presented us with an opportunity when we suggested that we also have an embassy in Fiji. That not everyone just asked what business we have in Fiji now. Some newspapers wrote that.

But many political players said that this was a very good geopolitical idea. And we were able to make it clear it’s also in our interest to be represented there.

And the good thing was that the island states, and especially the Pacific Islands Forum, in the region said, yes, we trust you Germans. Because you weren’t only there or had only started thinking about an embassy since China also set about strengthening its diplomatic missions here. Rather Germany has been a reliable partner for years, not to say decades, when it comes to our greatest security threat. And that’s not a larger neighbour, but the climate crisis. This trust, which we have enjoyed for decades, is something we can continue to build on at the geopolitical level.

A second point, which can be seen negatively, but which I see in a positive light, has to do with the geopolitical context – that now, with the commitment made at the last COP, that the end of the fossil age has come, the question of fossil fuel powers is a little different.

There’s still a lot of wealth out there, of course, but there are other countries that have resources. Not oil, coal and gas, but rather lithium or other raw materials that are needed in the field of clean energies.

These countries that are part of the new clean economy, many of which are in Africa, have an opportunity here if we do this right and don’t just have our own national interests in mind. We need to think together in terms of security policy, and not in these old blocs – oh look, the G7 or G20 countries are out to protect their own interests again. Rather, we need to ask ourselves how we can help the G77 countries to use these resources together.

And, at the same time, because we as strong industrialised countries in Europe, but also as an industrialised country like the US, are coming to realise right now that this isn’t just about helping others, but that if we pursue climate action around the world, then this is the best way to protect ourselves.

Because, as we have seen in the US, the damage here is getting so big that even the strongest economy is barely able to pay for it anymore.

Because the understanding of climate partnerships is no longer that we Europeans, we so-called Westerners, are now helping the Global South. But that this can be a genuine energy partnership, in our mutual interest and to our mutual benefit.

We in Europe found that it cost us five billion euro last year just to manage the flooding of rivers. Last year’s forest fires alone cost two billion euro.

The US had 28 climate-related disasters last year, each causing over a billion dollars in damage on average. That’s an average of two disasters per month.

That’s why this breaking up of old blocs is no coincidence, also at the level of domestic policy in the German Bundestag. I’m only aware of one party that still claims that climate change doesn’t exist. It was a different story here ten years ago.

But even in the US, it’s no longer true to say that some people want to do something about climate change while unfortunately others don’t.

I’ve travelled to Texas quite a bit. And precisely there you can see that the Governor doesn’t say: “don’t even get me started on renewables.”

On the contrary, numerous companies, including numerous German companies, are investing in green technology in Texas. And no one can do without these workers on the ground or without companies that create jobs.

And here, too, things are coming full circle all of a sudden. Perhaps if we consider elections taking place in the future. If we consider that German companies investing in climate protection in Texas could perhaps be a decisive security factor with regard to the United States’ NATO presence in Germany in the future.

In my discussions about ammonia, about the potential of renewable energies, I sometimes mentioned that I’m really pleased that so many German companies are based there. Just in case things should turn out differently in Ukraine than they are at the moment, where we as Europeans, as NATO, are doing everything in our power to ensure that Russia doesn’t win this war. If things do turn out differently, because NATO is no longer strong enough, because the US is no longer able to be so invested in NATO, I can hardly imagine that large companies such as Siemens or others will be able to create jobs in Texas, because we’ll have our hands full protecting Europe and Germany.

This means that we should continue to see this issue as one that has a major impact on bilateral relations, not only on bilateral relations in climate policy, but also on security policy relations.

From my point of view, this presents an opportunity also for relations between us Europeans and the US. An opportunity because other countries around the world that are a bit fed up with us Europeans telling climate conferences how to do things have now shown us that they’re actually faster. That’s good for them, but bad for us, because for a long time we thought: great, we’ve always been pioneers in climate policy, so we’ll also be pioneers in all technologies.

But we’ve seen that if we look at Kenya or Chile, for example, we cannot be all that proud of our great – and in the European context they are great – figures in the expansion of renewable energies. Because these two countries have already shown how to achieve extremely high growth rates in the sphere of renewables and how to use this as the basis for green industrialisation.

And that’s what the climate partnerships that I’ve already mentioned stand for, for us as the Federal Government, for us as the Federal Foreign Office, together with the other ministries.

Climate and energy partnerships in which we can learn from one another. We’ve now adopted more than 30 bilateral climate partnerships. These aren’t limited to starting to invest in some countries that haven’t yet developed renewable energy sources, but they also focus, to an increasing extent, on turning bilateral partnerships into networks, for example, in the case of our Just Transition Partnership with South Africa.

A partnership that was anything but easy at the beginning. Also because geopolitical questions thwarted this effort two and a half years ago when the question arose as to NATO’s role.

But we have managed this with a great deal of trust and reliability – above all through a partnership based on the understanding that it isn’t just the capitals that meet: as Germany’s Foreign Minister, I talk a lot in Cape Town about our actual experiences, about how Lusatia tackled things.

After all, saying, “well, Germany is getting there. You just have to follow our example in South Africa,” isn’t a convincing argument. Instead, we must answer the question “how should we explain to our employees here how jobs will be safeguarded?” I tell them that this won’t be easy, of course. It wasn’t easy for us either.

And when we talk about Lusatia we have to be honest about the fact that we also had to fight some really tough battles in the beginning, that we ourselves had to get to grips with the fact that climate action and environmental policy on the one hand and strong trade unions on the other aren’t a contradiction in terms, but that the best climate policy can only be conducted in cooperation with trade unions. That in regions where the issue of structural change isn’t viewed just in a favourable light, we also have to talk a lot about identity, and we have to talk about what other infrastructure projects are out there.

And, of course, we also have to talk about the fact that Lusatia has achieved a great deal also with financial support. We mustn’t talk that down either.

It’s precisely this dialogue that we’re trying to get off the ground together with South Africa. And now we’re not only on the right track with regard to South Africa, but we’ve also been able to create a network – the Accelerated Partnership for Renewables in Africa, a network in which leading energy transition countries in Africa cooperate with business representatives and investors. Precisely with the understanding that this is about the economy, about growth, about prosperity in the region.

And just this week, the APRA Investment Forum in Kenya brought together international government representatives, investors and companies such as Siemens Energy to advance precisely these projects. We want to emphasise even more strongly in Baku that we’re doing a great deal of text work with a view to the reduction targets that we want to achieve there. But we’re also grateful that many of the companies that are here today will be on board again also in Baku, so that we can make progress together on how this can work, who the investors are and what the partnerships are like in the same way as at major trade fairs in recent years.

And it’s also true in these negotiations that we can only win over other partners with trust. The most difficult question for me, for us, in Dubai last year, was this: “can you promise that this will also work here in our country? That what works in Lusatia will also work in South Africa?”

I don’t make any promises at all these days anyway. I could never have imagined that a war of aggression would return to Europe. But it’s a bit easier with South Africa because you can say, look, this is how we did it with our trade unions. We have a similar social model, even if the challenges we face are different.

It’s a different story with very small countries that not everyone here in this room would be able to point to on a map. It’s a different story if these partners want a German investor to come and we ask around to see who would like to invest in Palau, Tuvalu or other island nations. That’s why the question of implementation is so vital.

How to bring the grid on the ground? How do we expand grids in concrete terms? Who’s in charge of these infrastructure measures?

This is something that we’ll also be focusing on intensively in Baku. Because if we can’t come up with answers to this – and that was, I think, Jennifer, one of our most important insights last year and in previous years, but especially last year – then some countries are simply not willing to get on board with reduction targets. If we say, “it’s in your interests that we commit to further reductions,” those countries might say, “but if you don’t tell us how were going to do this, we can’t go home.”

And I think it’s important to remember that everyone has their own national domestic policy. When I return from a climate conference, people often say: “Oh, so you’ve pledged further millions and billions. How do you intend to pay for this, given the check on public borrowing and when you need to tighten your belts?”

And, as a politician, you have to have a response to that. This is how things work in other countries, too, of course. If we expect other countries to set new reduction targets and then they go home and can’t say how this will actually be implemented or who the investors will be, then even the best politician, especially in a democracy where you can be voted out of office, probably won’t be prepared to just sign on the dotted line.

This is one of the driving forces for us, especially as European countries. Namely the whole issue of reduction, where we are, of course, going to Baku with ambitious numbers again as the European Union.

Firstly, our own credibility is important. It is important that we can say with confidence that, yes, we have delivered on this.

In the first half of 2024, we generated 62 percent of our electricity from renewables in Germany. By 2030, the aim is for this to rise to 80 percent. While we’re not at the top of the league table here, we’re among the front runners. And we cannot be accused of expecting something of others that we aren’t doing ourselves.

This applies in particular, and it’s important to me to emphasise this, to coal-fired power generation, because its brief comeback at the beginning of Russia’s war propagated this narrative around the world that we have set out to expand coal-fired power generation once again. The opposite is the case. Coal-fired power generation has fallen by a further 20 percent, and we’ve shut down 15 coal-fired power plants in the first half of 2024. We want to continue this together, of course, also as far as our energy consumption is concerned. Even though we all know that energy efficiency is an area in which we still have a lot to do.

And, secondly, we want to make it clear that this can be achieved in cooperation with our leading companies. And not just in the electricity and energy sectors, but especially in industry, for example with our steel production plants, with Salzgitter AG, one of Germany’s oldest producers of steel, which in 2018 was the first company in the world to present a hydrogen-based process for steel production. These are the offers that we can make to other countries.

This also applies to MAN Energy Solutions with regard to shipping. We also know that shipping and aviation were still no-go zones at the COP in Paris because we didn’t know how they could become climate-neutral in the future.

The third point is always money, of course. And we have to be honest here, too: we’re a very rich country. We’ve invested billions in Lusatia alone. We’re also supporting these large companies, producers of steel, with a view to helping them to achieve this transformation. Therefore, part of being honest when talking to others at climate conferences about how they can make their climate contributions is talking about what we ourselves can do to help achieve this. And industrialised countries have a special responsibility here. That’s why financial instruments have become increasingly important in recent years. And, as we’ve seen in recent years, they also number among the most important geopolitical issues.

We can forget about showing our faces at the G20 summit in Brazil, or anywhere else for that matter, if we’re incapable of talking about climate financing.

Because, of course, there’s a very profound injustice here. And, looking back, this hasn’t always been acknowledged by all of the industrialised countries. Not only has our own prosperity increased on the basis of our CO2 emissions, but our financial instruments, looking to the World Bank and the IMF, are very transatlantic, to put it diplomatically. And it’s become established practice for the Americans always to chair one and the Europeans the other. The fact that a very, very large number of people think this is unfair is understandable. The fact that we didn’t respond to this sooner is now water under the bridge. But that’s why, for us, an honest climate policy and an honest geopolitical strategy mean that we always discuss the reform of financial institutions when talking about financing and investment.

But if we want to talk about opportunities here as well, then we can show that we are, of course, doing our part. You know that. Last year, we set aside and mobilised almost 10 billion euro for international climate financing. Of these funds, 5.7 billion euro came from public budgets or public funds. Germany, together with Canada, has made a significant contribution to ensuring that we have, at long last, fulfilled the old promise made in Copenhagen of 100 billion US dollars in climate financing from the industrialised countries.

But we also know that none of this is enough. And that’s why, to our mind, talking honestly about climate financing also means saying – and we’ve started doing this in recent years and will continue to do this with all due resolve – that the current major and financially strong emitters must also get on board.

We cannot just focus on historical responsibility. That’s why I have personally also addressed the Gulf States, China and other major emitters. We know what our historical responsibility is. That’s why we’re making our funds available time and again. Germany's the first to be ready. But you also have to do your part.

And the good thing is, and this is what I mean by breaking up the old blocs, countries now trust that we won’t leave them out in the cold when it comes to their security issues. That’s why, in Egypt two years ago and then, in particular, last year at the COP, we managed to ensure that the loss and damage fund was not only set up, but that many countries said: here we have the new financial architecture. More countries are paying in, and not just with money from public funds. And this money is being disbursed more fairly, namely to the countries that are genuinely affected and to countries where a hurricane can wipe out their entire GDP, leaving hospitals and schools without funding.

I believe that this, too, is another opportunity to restore justice. Because, after all, the world of 1992 was a different place.

Even if together we continue to advance this climate conference with these thoughts in mind, then, unfortunately, that’s the bitter reality, the world will still not be a perfect place tomorrow.

Major global crises and conflicts will unfortunately continue to exist.

But we can make it clear that standing up for every tenth of a degree of reduction matters, not only because this saves human lives, because it’s economically more prudent to have to rebuild less and because it makes economic sense, but also because it’s the best guarantee of our security.

And with this in mind, I believe we’ve already reached an important positive “tipping point”. Just as we, unfortunately, risk reaching negative tipping points in our ecosystem over the next 20 or 30 years due to our slow response, we’ve reached a positive tipping point in recent years: none of the leading industrial nations can afford to go back to a world of fossil fuels. Far too much has already been invested in the new world for that to happen. The stranded investments that this would lead to enable us now to build on what we have achieved.

And no matter how much divides us from certain countries, we must call to mind that together we are not only the best alliance against the climate crisis because CO2 knows no borders, but that, together, we can also uphold the rules-based order.