Bavaria is officially abandoning its target of reaching climate neutrality by 2040, citing as reasons the energy crisis triggered by Russia's invasion of Ukraine and Germany's withdrawal from nuclear power; these are factors that, according to the government, have "made the target unachievable", reports the newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung. The change of policy was agreed by the federal state's coalition government, which holds a comfortable majority in the Bavarian parliament, meaning that the required approval is a mere formality.

Bavaria will henceforth align its actions with the German federal government's 2025 climate neutrality target. Bavaria's environment minister Thorsten Glauber, a member of the regional conservative party Free Voters, described the revised target as "more achievable" and "more honest".

Bavaria's prime minister Markus Söder, who in turn is a member of the conservative Christian Social Union (CSU), the sister party of chancellor Friedrich Merz, committed to the 2040 target five years ago. That was in July 2021, following the devastating floods in Bavaria, during which villages were destroyed and more than 100 people died in the Ahr valley. At the time he said that the world stood on the threshold of "epochal change".

Opposition MPs were quick to criticise the change of decision. The leader of the Green Party's parliamentary group in Bavaria, Katharina Schulze, stated that Bavaria had "achieved absolutely nothing" in the fight against emissions-intensive sectors such as transport and heating. The Social Democrat environment politician Harry Scheuenstuhl pointed out that only three new wind turbines had been installed in the federal state of Bavaria this year, which is evidence of the failure and impotence of the government's climate policy. Michael Sterner, a climate expert at the University of Regensburg, told Süddeutsche Zeitung that policymakers ought to be accelerating the rollout of renewable energy in response to Russia's "fossil fuel war" and the conflicts in the Middle East.

Despite his coalition's decision to scrap the target, Bavaria's environment minister Thorsten Glauber warned that inaction on climate change will ultimately prove more expensive than cutting emissions now, given the mounting damage and adaptation costs associated with extreme weather.

Bavaria had already signalled in November 2025 its intention to postpone reaching the climate target. Under Germany's system of government, the federal states have limited powers in the field of climate and energy legislation, but they can, for example, introduce laws that clarify or tighten energy efficiency rules, or set more ambitious targets. In October, voters in Hamburg (one of Germany's 16 federal states and its second largest city) approved a referendum requiring the city to achieve climate neutrality by 2040. That is five years earlier than the deadline set for Germany's federal climate target.