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Grohnde nuclear power plant, now shut down
Photo: Ulrich Stamm / imago images/Future Image
In view of the war in Ukraine and the threatening scenario of a lack of gas deliveries from Russia, there is again a dispute in Germany about the phase-out of coal and nuclear power.
Green Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock warned on Friday on ARD television that there would be "massive collateral damage" if Russia was excluded from the Swift banking network, through which the financial institutions process their payment transactions.
This could also endanger the German energy supply.
“Anything we could do to stop this madness, we would.
But we also have to make sure that we don't choose instruments that Putin ends up laughing at because they hit us much harder," says Baerbock.
50 percent of hard coal imports came from Russia, said Baerbock.
If these deliveries were not made, coal-fired power plants in Germany would not be able to continue.
The government is looking for alternatives under high pressure, but cannot now heal the mistakes of the past.
They bear »a responsibility for ensuring that we in Germany continue to have a stable supply of electricity and heat.«
In your own party, of course, you see it completely differently - and want to stick to the early exit from coal.
"Coal is not a bridging technology, but a mistake," said party leader Ricarda Lang to the newspapers of the Funke media group.
“If we give up the coal phase-out in 2030, we will give up the Paris climate agreement.” It is now a question of significantly increasing the pace of the expansion of renewable energies.
Representatives of the Green coalition partner FDP and the Union are now pleading against a possible earlier exit than legally decided.
"An early phase-out date for coal-fired power generation is out of the question," said Saxony's Prime Minister Michael Kretschmer (CDU) of "Welt" with a view to the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
The energy policy spokesman for the FDP, Michael Kruse, spoke out in favor of the continued operation of coal-fired power plants.
"I think we would be wise to suspend the dismantling of modern base-load power plants such as the power plant in Hamburg-Moorburg," he also said in the "Welt."
The head of the Munich Ifo Institute, Clemens Fuest, is meanwhile promoting a later shutdown of the last nuclear power plants.
Although this is a "complex undertaking," Fuest told the Neue Osnabrücker Zeitung, it should be considered "until the dependency on Russian natural gas is overcome, which is likely to be several years."
The operators of the power plants reject this.
Nuclear power has no future in Germany, a spokesman for Eon told the Rheinische Post.
Continued operation beyond the statutory end date of 2022 is not an issue.
The topic is "off the table," said RWE.
"In the short term, it would not be possible to start up the nuclear power plants again."
sbo/dpa/afp