The German federal government approved a climate action package Wednesday to cut more carbon emissions in a bid to meet its previously pledged climate target.
Germany pledged to cut emissions by 40 percent by 2020 from 1990 levels. The target is more ambitious than that of the whole European Union which is only willing to reach the same reduction level by 2030, Xinhua reported.
However, Germany faces challenges in meeting the target as the country abandoned nuclear power and still relies on conventional energies such as brown and hard coal for power generation.
The German government said Wednesday that under current reduction efforts, the country was expected to miss the 40 percent target by 5 to 8 percentage points.
According to the climate package, Germany would cut an extra 62 million to 78 million tonnes of CO2 equivalents in emissions by 2020 compared with the current projection.