Munich climate plan carries millions in annual costs

Munich is investing millions of euros to become climate-neutral by 2035, BR reports. The city is spending on projects including new trees, energy-efficient street lighting and support for climate-neutral buildings.

Munich is among several Bavarian cities pursuing climate neutrality. Augsburg and Regensburg also aim to reach the target by 2035, while Nuremberg and Würzburg have set a deadline of 2040.

Planting trees is one of the city’s climate measures, but it is expensive. In existing green spaces, planting a tree costs about 5,000 euros. Where extensive construction work is needed in the street, the average cost rises to 45,000 euros.

Work can include removing and rebuilding road surfaces, relocating underground utility lines and adapting drainage systems. Trees also need specially constructed planting pits for their roots. These can hold up to 36 cubic metres, roughly the size of a large construction container.

The pits are filled with special substrate, and the trees must be watered and maintained. This establishment and development care costs about 5,000 euros per tree over five years, according to Gudrun Kloos, a landscape architect at Munich’s building department.

In Munich’s heavily paved city centre, a single tree can cost up to 95,000 euros, Mayor Dominik Krause said. The planting pits there must be reinforced so that lorries can drive over them.

The city is investing about 52 million euros in 3,500 new trees, particularly species that are resilient to the climate and provide extensive shade. About 2,000 of the trees are expected to have been planted by the end of this year.

A recent calculation by the Technical University of Munich found that Munich’s urban trees can absorb more carbon dioxide in summer than the city’s cars emit. The trees can also lower temperatures by up to 10 degrees and provide shade.

Not everyone supports the investment. Sebastian Schall, environmental policy spokesman for the CSU group on Munich’s city council, said money should instead be used to expand bus services. The CSU also argues that new trees, including those on Augustenstrasse in the Maxvorstadt district, remove too many parking spaces.

Schall said his group generally supported planting new trees but wanted each location to be assessed in detail before a decision was made.

A mature tree typically requires the space of one or two parking spaces, said Stephan Pauleit, a professor of landscape development strategy and management at the Technical University of Munich. He said this created potential for conflict but that not planting new trees was not an alternative in the face of climate change.

The aim was not to turn the city back into the countryside, Pauleit said, but to prevent heat stress from worsening. Munich could face temperatures up to three degrees Celsius higher by 2055, he warned. Conditions in so-called heat districts could become unbearable.

Munich currently spends an average of more than 110 million euros a year on explicit climate protection projects, equivalent to about one percent of the city’s annual budget. These projects include converting street lighting to energy-efficient systems and supporting property owners in making their buildings climate-neutral.