GERMANY'S ENERGY POLICY - A CAUTIONARY TALE FOR EUROPE

EU Reporter, 12 June 2018 

Colin Stevens

For all the bravado, Germany’s Energiewende may be more cautionary tale than success story for other nations looking to modernize their energy sectors. At the heart of the policy lies a fundamental hypocrisy: despite Germany’s commitment to expanding its renewable energy capacity to replace lost nuclear plants, the country’s carbon emissions are currently on the rise.



The hasty decision to close all 19 nuclear power stations in Germany by 2022 was made in the wake of the 2011 Fukushima disaster, only a year after Chancellor Angela Merkel had decided to extend the plants’ lifespan. This policy reversal was coupled with plans to eliminate the use of fossil fuels by bringing renewables’ share of the German energy mix up to 60 percent by 2050.

Despite its seemingly sensible foundations, the Energiewende’s first years have revealed the problems the model poses for both Germany and the rest of Europe. Energiewende is hardly just a domestic issue: one of its basic tenets is that the country has nine neighbours with whom it can exchange power, either selling surplus energy when renewables overproduce or importing it from Austrian, Polish, French and Czech power stations when German renewables underperform.

While Germany has managed to bring renewables’ share of electricity generation up to 30 percent, the previous steady decline in carbon emissions – 27 percent from 1999 to 2009 – has sharply reversed since Germany decided to phase out nuclear. Instead of falling, emissions have instead risen by four percent in the years since. Why the worrying uptick in emissions? Because renewable energy is still inherently intermittent.

Barring major advances in battery and storage technology, Germany will be forced to retain other domestic energy sources for decades to come. If nuclear power is ruled out, coal plants will continue to run in their place and pollute the atmosphere in the process. Even worse, many thermal power plants in Germany burn lignite, a specific type of hard coal which emits more CO2 than almost any other fossil fuel. Whereas natural gas exudes between 150 and 430g of CO2 per kilowatt-hour, lignite clocks in at a staggering 1100g of CO2. Nuclear power only gives off  16g of CO2 per kilowatt-hour.