© Khumaer.us
Almost every country on Earth today has pledged to achieve Net Zero carbon emissions. The vast majority of them have also set spurious target dates for doing so – usually by 2050. So far, only a handful of industrialised countries have succeeded in almost fully decarbonising their electricity grids. They have only achieved this with a heavy baseload of either nuclear power and / or hydropower.
Germany certainly isn’t one of them. The irony is that Germany arguably had the most ambitious decarbonisation plans of any country in the past decade. It just also had the most fantastical approach to it.
Germany’s plan is to achieve Net Zero with only wind and solar power. It calls this plan the Energiewende, or ‘energy transition’. One major component of this plan was to phase out nuclear energy. Germany’s Green Party, since its inception, has campaigned to ban nuclear. It finally got its wish following the Fukushima nuclear meltdown in Japan in 2011. Despite the fact that Germany is not at risk from tsunamis, the actual cause of the meltdown, and no one died directly from the disaster in Japan, the German government, led by then CDU chancellor Angela Merkel, announced a policy to shut down all of the country’s 17 nuclear reactors by 2022.
It’s worth noting that Japan also reacted similarly following the disaster, closing nearly all of its plants. But it soon learned the cost of energy scarcity. It reversed its plans to phase out nuclear energy, restarted the reactors and now even plans to build new ones.
Nonetheless, between 2012 and 2021, Germany continued its gradual shutdown of its nuclear reactors. During this time, public opinion was mixed. While many Germans did not support building new nuclear power plants, most were against closing existing ones. Only 34 per cent supported the move, while 59 per cent believed a full phase-out was wrong. Among those opposing the nuclear phase-out, 66 per cent expressed concerns about a rise in energy prices following the shutdown of plants. That 66 per cent were right to be concerned. Electricity prices have been on an upward trend ever since.
After the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022, the energy crisis hit Europe. Out of necessity, the nuclear phase-out in Germany was delayed. Instead of shutting down all nuclear reactors according to schedule, Germany kept them open over the winter of 2022. However, the Green Party, now in government, pressed ahead with the phase-out plans the following year, with the last three plants closing in April 2023. Apparently, the government had little concern for how energy demands would be met the following winter or for the impact on energy prices.
Germany is now feeling the consequences of sky-high prices. Manufacturers are being forced to close operations and relocate overseas, with even major companies like Volkswagen shutting down some of their plants. Germany is quickly finding itself on a path to deindustrialisation.
I captured a photograph in Berlin on the day Germany shut down its final nuclear reactor. It shows an installation Greenpeace had set up outside the Brandenburg Gate in celebration of the end of nuclear energy in Germany. Nuclear power was symbolised as a slain dinosaur, while solar power was portrayed as the hero, standing triumphantly with a sword and shield. The message of this artwork was clear: solar power has emerged victorious.
According to data, this couldn’t be further from the truth. Since phasing out nuclear power, Germany has struggled to meet its demand for electricity, despite investing heavily in wind and solar power. In 2022 and 2023, to make up for lost supplies, it had to reopen mothballed coal-fired power stations and return to burning the dirtiest of fuels – lignite coal.
Germany’s pursuit of Net Zero has caused significant political instability, too. In November last year, the coalition government collapsed during a debate over the 2024 budget, because finance minister Christian Lindner, head of the Free Democratic Party, refused to lift the so-called debt brake (Germany’s self-imposed fiscal rules) and take on new debt to fund clean-energy investments. Chancellor Olaf Scholz of the Social Democratic Party disagreed, but Lindner’s concerns were valid. The government is out of money, but still has immense costs to pay, including for the continuation of the Energiewende, which is predicted to cost €1 trillion.
Unfortunately, the madness of Energiewende has had Europe-wide repercussions. Across the continent, ministers have increasingly begun to complain about having to prop up Germany’s grid with exports. Norway has even proposed disconnecting its NordLink undersea power cable, the main connection between the two countries’ electricity grids, as Germany’s constant electricity shortages are leading to higher prices in Norway, too.
Many of us have been waiting with bated breath to see whether Germany will u-turn on nuclear energy. But for now, Scholz’s SPD maintains that nuclear energy is too expensive.
This is patently untrue. A recent paper by Jan Emblemsvåg found that Germany has spent a whopping €696 billion on its Energiewende so far, with very little environmental benefit. According to Emblemsvåg, if Germany had retained its nuclear fleet, it could have achieved a 73 per cent reduction in greenhouse-gas emissions by now, instead of the measly 25 per cent it did attain – at half the cost. Just this week, Germany has been burning high amounts of coal, with a carbon intensity in the range of 550g of CO2 per kilowatt-hour (kWh). Compare this with France’s electricity grid on the same day, with only 40g of CO2 per kWh, thanks to its massive push for nuclear energy in the 1980s.
A recent report by the Tony Blair Institute for Global Change reached a similar conclusion – that phasing out nuclear energy has very little climate benefit. It found that, had nuclear power plants not been phased out globally, 2023 ‘global energy-related emissions would have been six per cent lower, saving 2.1 Gt of CO2’. The report explains that ‘this would be the same as taking about 460million cars from the road for a year or removing the combined total 2023 emissions of Canada, South Korea, Australia and Mexico’.
The fact that politicians made these decisions under the guise of environmentalism is perhaps the most bewildering of all. The data are clear that nuclear power is environmentally superior to all other energy sources, whether considering lifecycle emissions, land footprint, lifespan, mineral requirements or anything else.
Evidently, Germany is not the only country that has made mistakes with energy policy. But it is a cautionary tale for others attempting to meet Net Zero targets. Australia, for example, maintains a total ban on nuclear energy, despite growing opposition to this archaic rule. Instead, the Australian government wants to meet its energy needs with mostly wind and solar power.
The remaining lesson is incontrovertible: replace rationality with ideology, and it will cost you financially, economically and politically. Choose to transition a functioning energy system to intermittent, less efficient alternatives and, sooner or later, we all pay the price.
Zion Lights is the founder of pro-nuclear campaign group Emergency Reactor, an environmentalist and a former spokesperson for Extinction Rebellion.
Images are for reference only.Images and contents gathered automatic from google or 3rd party sources.All rights on the images and contents are with their legal original owners.
Aggregated From –
