Recently the last remaining nuclear power plants in Germany were switched off. As the Telegraph wrote;
To do this with Vladimir Putin’s troops still in Ukraine is a case study in irrational fear trumping a proper appraisal of risk.
One of the key aims for the US in the Russia/Ukraine conflict is to isolate Russia from Europe. It has been successful in this, but at what cost to Europe? Looking in particular at Germany, whose industrial success story has been based to a large degree on the cheap importation of gas from Russia, what does the future hold?
The Nord Stream pipeline has been irreversibly blown up. Whether you believe the detailed report by Seymour Hersh which describes how the Biden administration and Norway carried out the sabotage, or whether you think Russia blew it up themselves, the consequences remain the same – Germany has lost it’s cheap gas.
Add to this the green policy agenda that Germany is following and it could end up being a very cold winter for Germany. The German Gas Storage Association, or INES, warned that given the current storage levels, the only way Germany doesn’t have some kind of shortage is if temperatures are warm. The association said;
If temperatures are medium to cold, the gas storage facilities will be heavily or completely emptied.
Further, the association’s managing director, Sebastian Bleschke, warned that the gas capacity has not been fully restored in the country and said there is a pressing need to expand the country’s infrastructure that could;
be activated at short notice and actually provide additional gas in the coming winter.
No More Nuclear Plants
Germany recently carried out its plans to close down three of its last operating nuclear plants, as part of the nuclear phase-out law passed back in 2011. Claiming that the move;
makes Germany safer and avoids additional high-level radioactive waste.
Germany’s Federal Ministry for the Environment, Nature Conservation, Nuclear Safety, and Consumer Protection told CNBC in a statement that;
the risks of nuclear power are ultimately unmanageable. No insurance in the world covers the potentially catastrophic extent of damage from a nuclear accident.
With sanctions on Russia and the blowing up of the Nord Stream pipelines the situation has changed dramatically since 2011. Back then German public opinion was swayed by two major events; Chernobyl and Fukushima.
Markus Soeder, Bavaria’s conservative governor, told The Associated Press;
While many countries in the world are even expanding nuclear power, Germany is doing the opposite...We need every possible form of energy. Otherwise, we risk higher electricity prices and businesses moving away.
Paying the Price
Now according to business-standard.com, consumer electricity prices in Germany are to rise by around a staggering 60% in 2023.
Furthermore, Germany has approved a draft bill that will ban any new oil and gas heating systems beginning in 2024 as the country moves to green energy. The draft bill calls for all new heating systems to run on 65 percent renewable energy. There are some exemptions, including homeowners over 80 and the country’s poorest.
The country’s environmentalists believe they have won a great victory; they may actually end up setting their cause back by a generation by creating a backlash. A poll out of Germany found that 78 percent of Germans are opposed to the bill.
The Financial Times, quoted the bill as saying;
Germany can neither achieve its climate goals nor quickly reduce its dependence on fossil fuels without a rapid sea change in the heating of buildings.
Germany wants to achieve climate neutrality by 2035.
However, critics have called the bill, which will appear before the Bundestag in June, the equivalent of an “atomic bomb” for the country.
Christian Lindner, the leader of Germany’s Free Democratic Party and the federal Minister of Finance, said it would blow up Germany’s tight debt control mechanisms.
Nord Stream
Just weeks after Seymour Hersh published his report on the Nord Stream pipelines sabotage, President Biden praised German Chancellor Olaf Scholz for “diversifying away from Russian energy sources.”
Hersh has said the Biden administration carried out the attack on the pipelines due to the fear that Europe would walk away from the war. He said one of the most repeated claims by military officials and politicians in Washington is that NATO is somehow closer than ever, but Russian oil and gas always “scared the hell out of Washington” because it could turn Western European countries closer to Moscow.
Even Elon Musk has weighed in saying Germany are making a major mistake and has said the timing of this couldn't be worse. This was a tweet in response to an interview from last year, shortly following Putin's action in Ukraine. In that interview, given a year ago to Mathias Döpfner, CEO of Axel Springer, the billionaire had gone further.
Germany should not only not shut down the nuclear power plants, it should reopen the ones that shut down," he told the media executive. "It's crazy to shut down nuclear power plants. Please do not shut down nuclear power plants, and please reopen the ones that have been shut.
He called Germany's decision "total madness," because "this is a national security risk."
Listen. Playtime is over. Ok? Obviously, playtime is over. It’s a national security risk to shut these things down…I think people need to understand, coal power plants because of their emissions, they cause us a number of deaths every year, are far more dangerous than nuclear power plants.