page_title: Climate change in Germany
section_title: North Sea
hierarchical_section_title: Climate change in Germany / Regional impacts of climate change / North Sea
caption_attribution_description: Hamburg, Germany: Population Density and Low Elevation Coastal Zones
context_page_description: These include long-term impacts on agriculture, more intense heatwaves and coldwaves, flash and coastal flooding, and reduced water availability. Debates over how to address these long-term challenges have also sparked changes in the energy sector and in mitigation strategies. Germany's energiewende has been a significant political issue in German politics that has made coalition talks difficult for Angela Merkel's CDU. Despite massive investments in renewable energy, Germany has struggled to reduce coal production and usage. The country remains Europe's largest importer of coal and produces the 2nd most amount of coal in the European Union behind Poland, about 1% of the global total.
  Germany hosted the COP23 meeting in Bonn to which the German delegation traveled in a carbon-neutral train to demonstrate commitment to carbon neutrality.
context_section_description: The North Sea provinces of Schleswig-Holstein and Lower Saxony have a high vulnerability to storm surges and high-impact river flooding. The Baltic province of Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania is less vulnerable to storm surges, but at higher risk to loss of biodiversity and loss of topsoil and erosion. A key reason why Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania is particularly vulnerable to climate change among northern provinces is that it is a relatively poor region of Germany with a large agricultural sector.
caption: Hamburg Population Density and Low Elevation Coastal Zones
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