AfD on climate and energy

The AfD wants to repeal Thuringia's climate law and change other state rules that it believes harm the economy. The state should not favor particular technologies. Businesses should get freedom and planning security.

The AfD wants to scrap Thuringia's climate law. It says such rules hurt businesses. The state should not favor any one technology. The best products should win in the market.

The platform speaks of an ideologically driven urge to regulate and ban, which it wants to end. State rules with negative effects on the economy would be reformed or dropped. By technology neutrality the AfD means that the market decides on products and innovations. It includes support for young, innovative firms, especially in research and development. It rejects requirements that impose costs unrelated to a company's business.

The AfD opposes building any more wind turbines, especially in forests. It also rejects solar installations on farmland or on largely unspoiled land. It argues that wind power harms nature and the landscape and cannot provide a reliable power supply.

The AfD wants no new wind turbines. This applies especially to forests. It also rejects solar plants on farmland. The party says wind turbines harm nature and the landscape.

In the platform's view, wind energy can cover neither base load nor peak demand and is the product of special-interest politics for the wind industry. It says building and running turbines permanently seals land and kills very large numbers of birds, bats and insects, including protected species. Landscapes are said to be disfigured. Until the federal government ends the expansion of wind and solar, citizens should get more effective tools at the municipal level to block such projects.

The AfD wants to end state support for renewable energy, such as guaranteed purchase prices, and abolish its priority access to the power grid. It rejects the SuedLink, SuedOstLink and P540 power lines. It argues that the energy transition has raised costs and made supply less secure.

Wind and solar power get fixed prices and go first in the grid today. The AfD wants to end both. It also rejects big new power lines through Thuringia. The party says the energy transition makes power costly and less secure.

The platform stresses that the AfD is not opposed to renewables in principle but wants to end what it calls their planned-economy style support. Operators whose plants make costly grid-stabilizing interventions necessary should bear part of those costs. The party sees the SuedLink, SuedOstLink and P540 lines as a consequence of the energy transition, since they carry wind power from the north to southern Germany and run through Thuringia. According to the platform, the energy transition has made electricity, fuel and heating more expensive and raised the risk of a large-scale blackout.

The AfD wants electricity in Thuringia to come mainly from gas-fired plants and calls for Germany to return quickly to nuclear power. Natural gas should again be bought from Russia, and the Nord Stream pipelines should be repaired. It rejects fracking and is skeptical about hydrogen.

The AfD wants power to come mainly from gas. Germany should use nuclear power again. Gas should come from Russia again. The Nord Stream pipelines should be repaired for that. The party rejects fracking. That is a way to get gas out of deep rock.

Gas plants should ideally also supply their waste heat for heating. For the AfD, nuclear power includes renewed research, among other things on reprocessing nuclear waste (transmutation). According to the platform, sanctions against Russia have worsened the energy crisis. Biogas and hydropower can contribute on a limited scale, though biogas should not rely on monoculture crops. The party considers a statewide hydrogen network very expensive and views green hydrogen critically because it depends on wind power. Existing pumped-storage plants should get better market conditions; storage research should be funded, but operating storage facilities should not be subsidized.

The AfD wants to repeal Thuringia's climate law and cut energy-saving requirements for buildings and appliances to a minimum. It rejects the federal ban on conventional oil, gas and wood heating systems. It calls the ban a disproportionate intrusion on property and freedom and a driver of costs.

The AfD wants to repeal Thuringia's climate law. Nobody should be forced to save energy in their home. The party also rejects the ban on older heating systems. It says the rules cost too much and interfere with property.

According to the platform, current insulation rules for buildings go too far and make construction more expensive and slower. The AfD wants to push at the federal level to reduce energy efficiency rules to a minimum and to lift unnecessary rules at the state level. In its view, the heating ban hits rural areas especially hard because many people there heat with wood. In eastern Germany, the 30-year grandfathering period is also running out for many oil and gas heaters, so more expensive new systems would be needed.

The AfD rejects the carbon price charged since 2021, which it calls a price-driving tax. In its view, climate policy leads to the deindustrialization of Western countries and endangers the auto industry and its suppliers in Thuringia.

Since 2021, emitting CO2 has cost money in Germany. The AfD is against this. It says this makes everything more expensive. In its view, climate policy hurts industry and car companies in Thuringia.

The platform criticizes the Paris climate agreement: the duty to cut CO2 emissions, it says, in practice applies only to Western industrial nations such as Germany. Major emitters like China and India, by contrast, are allowed a steep increase. The effects are said to be felt in Thuringia already, as German carmakers lose their leading position on the world market and suppliers lose the basis of their business.

The AfD fundamentally rejects the EU's decision to phase out combustion engines and calls for openness to all technologies. In its view, the ban puts Thuringian carmakers and suppliers at a disadvantage in international competition.

The EU wants to ban new cars with combustion engines. The AfD is against this. It says the ban hurts car companies in Thuringia. Every technology should stay allowed.

The platform calls openness to all technologies a precondition for innovation. It says carmakers and suppliers in the state are disadvantaged against international competitors by the ban. The AfD speaks of a questionable climate ideology for which jobs and prosperity must not be put at risk.