Industry Overview by German Federal Association for eMobility

August 2020 / Vor­wort von BEM-Vize-Präsi­dent Chris­t­ian Heep im NEAS Guide 2021 / 2022 der AHK Chi­na in Shanghai
Through the activ­i­ties of the Ger­man Fed­er­al Asso­ci­a­tion for eMo­bil­i­ty with Messe Frank­furt and Auto­mechani­ka Shang­hai, the CECC, Tongji Uni­ver­si­ty and the Ger­man Indus­try & Com­merce Greater Chi­na, we have a long-stand­ing Ger­man, Euro­pean and Chi­nese friend­ship that we val­ue as the basis of trust­ing and insti­tu­tion­al cooperation.
We are com­mit­ted to sus­tain­abil­i­ty, inter­gen­er­a­tional jus­tice and cli­mate and envi­ron­men­tal pro­tec­tion in the con­text of the ener­gy and mobil­i­ty tran­si­tion. In these process­es, we are par­tic­u­lar­ly inter­est­ed in the over­all eco­nom­ic con­text and how we man­age to present a proof of con­cept. Because that is the only way to shape our world as we imag­ine it for us and our chil­dren in the near future. By the mid­dle of the cen­tu­ry at the lat­est, mankind should no longer pol­lute the cli­mate. Green­house gas emis­sions then have to be avoid­ed as far as pos­si­ble and we even have to start gen­er­at­ing neg­a­tive emis­sions; i.e. to fil­ter green­house gas­es from the atmosphere.
The back­ground to our col­lab­o­ra­tions in the Euro­pean and inter­na­tion­al envi­ron­ment is the fact that the ener­gy and mobil­i­ty tran­si­tion does not stop at nation­al bor­ders. We are con­vinced that we can best advance the chal­lenges and oppor­tu­ni­ties togeth­er. Excit­ing changes in busi­ness and pol­i­tics are cur­rent­ly announced. An actu­al rethink­ing and a pro­found reori­en­ta­tion is increas­ing­ly gain­ing polit­i­cal, eco­nom­ic and social accep­tance. The coro­na pan­dem­ic must not hold up or delay this cen­tral project. On the con­trary: It is impor­tant to use the nec­es­sary efforts, invest­ment and res­cue pro­grams to accel­er­ate the trans­for­ma­tion to a sus­tain­able, resilient and future-ori­ent­ed econ­o­my and thus also to achieve the goals of the Paris cli­mate pro­tec­tion agree­ment. Such an approach offers the unique oppor­tu­ni­ty to coun­ter­act the cli­mate cri­sis with regard to plan­e­tary lim­its and at the same time to cre­ate sus­tain­able pros­per­i­ty and jobs in a cli­mate-neu­tral world. In par­tic­u­lar, the gen­e­sis of tech­no­log­i­cal inno­va­tions and the result­ing eco­nom­ic added val­ue are a major gain that can only be achieved through ambi­tious imple­men­ta­tion of the project. Over­all, our gen­er­al under­stand­ing of crises is cur­rent­ly being sen­si­tized and the process of recog­ni­tion in pol­i­tics, busi­ness, media and soci­ety is matur­ing that we can also use the cri­sis as an oppor­tu­ni­ty for a fresh start. Think­ing in a new way, tak­ing bold paths and ques­tion­ing exist­ing facts and estab­lished busi­ness prac­tices prob­a­bly har­bors an “out-of-the-box poten­tial” that would not have been pos­si­ble before the crisis.
If we man­age to show the world that sus­tain­abil­i­ty, cli­mate and envi­ron­men­tal pro­tec­tion, 100 per­cent renew­able ener­gies, over­all CO2-neu­tral­i­ty and a com­plete mobil­i­ty rev­o­lu­tion based on emis­sion-free dri­ve con­cepts are eco­nom­i­cal­ly viable and afford­able — and even secure and increase added val­ue and pros­per­i­ty — then many more coun­tries will fol­low these exam­ples. And only then will we be able to have a pos­i­tive impact on the world at all. If we do not imple­ment this prompt­ly, we will con­tin­ue to exceed the cli­ma­to­log­i­cal tip­ping points and an uncer­tain future will then make our efforts sig­nif­i­cant­ly more difficult.
In the course of this glob­al trend rever­sal, we should net­work even more inten­sive­ly. We can sup­port each oth­er through fair com­pe­ti­tion and in par­tic­u­lar through sci­en­tif­ic, tech­no­log­i­cal and social coop­er­a­tion. Togeth­er we rep­re­sent an enor­mous inno­va­tion and eco­nom­ic fac­tor that we should not under­es­ti­mate. In this way we can devel­op a green econ­o­my that first restruc­tures our own coun­tries sus­tain­ably and then exports the knowl­edge and insights of the nec­es­sary process­es all over the world.
Chi­na and Ger­many each play a cru­cial role in this transna­tion­al Green New Deal. I cur­rent­ly see no oth­er com­bi­na­tion of two eco­nom­ic pow­ers that can cre­ate the nec­es­sary impact. And I see eco­nom­ic effi­cien­cy, pros­per­i­ty, social jus­tice and sus­tain­abil­i­ty in har­mo­ny, which are spread­ing across the whole world as the fourth indus­tri­al revolution.
In the course of these con­sid­er­a­tions, it is time for us to per­ceive our­selves as a deci­sive geo­log­i­cal fac­tor in the Anthro­pocene. Sci­en­tif­ic knowl­edge, advanced tech­nolo­gies and our gift of rea­son should con­tin­ue to pre­vail. The idea, inten­tion and will­ing­ness to do so are already ful­ly anchored in our soci­eties. The tech­ni­cal con­cepts are also avail­able and the finan­cial require­ments can be raised. There is only a lack of a new posi­tion­ing and eval­u­a­tion of our eco­nom­ic and eco­log­i­cal actions, a gen­er­al rethink­ing and glob­al polit­i­cal deci­sion-mak­ing process­es that exclu­sive­ly fol­low the prin­ci­ple of sus­tain­abil­i­ty and inter­gen­er­a­tional justice.
I would like to ask you to be enthu­si­as­tic about this path. Let’s go on this jour­ney togeth­er and show our­selves, our chil­dren and our grand­chil­dren that we can do great things together.