Nuclear power, coal, hydrogen: expand energy supply - without ideological blinders
Created: 10/14/2022, 8:00 p.m
Prof. Dr.
Christoph M. Schmidt is President of the RWI - Leibniz Institute for Economic Research and Professor at the Ruhr University Bochum.
© © N. Bruckmann/M.
Litzka/RWI/Sven Lorenz
The loss of Russian gas supplies cannot be completely replaced by other gas imports.
In order to secure the energy supply, the resulting gap must now be filled in a different way, writes Prof. Christoph M. Schmidt, President of the RWI, in the guest article.
These include longer runtimes for coal and nuclear power plants in the short term and the development of the hydrogen economy in the longer term.
Essen – Germany is in an acute energy crisis.
It was triggered by an injustice committed by third parties, the Russian war of aggression against Ukraine.
But we got ourselves into this unfortunate situation primarily by setting the course ourselves.
It will now not be enough to replace some of the lost Russian gas imports with gas supplies from other countries and to reduce domestic gas consumption.
Rather, we should finally openly discuss conflicting goals that have been glossed over so far.
Do we really want our economy to move away from fossil raw materials without risking de-industrialization?
Then we have to counter the phase-out of energy sources with a corresponding approach to alternatives that not only work on the drawing board, but in real life.
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Germany's energy dependency on Russia: an issue for over a decade
It has never been a good recipe for successful crisis management to struggle for a long time with the decisions that led to the crisis.
But one should learn from past experiences.
More than a decade ago, for example, scientific articles had already addressed the problem of Germany's exceptionally high energy import dependency in international comparison from a single supplier country, namely Russia.
Since then, this dependency had even increased significantly until last year.
Along the way there were some decisions that should not be repeated based on today's knowledge.
The concentration on Russian pipeline gas through the construction of the Baltic Sea pipelines was largely welcomed due to the supposedly reliable availability of cheap natural gas, while criticism of it from the USA, for example, was dismissed as being based on interests.
Nor did any alarm bells ring when Gazprom acquired large parts of Germany's natural gas infrastructure.
Today one should have recognized that security of supply makes the diversification of supply sources and the provision of one's own storage facilities essential instead.
Instead of trusting in the reliability of our partner Russia according to the motto “change through rapprochement”, it would have been better to hope for the best and yet prepare for the worst.
Energy Crisis: In the short term, coal and nuclear power plants will have to run longer
However, the strong fixation on natural gas as a bridging technology in the transformation to climate neutrality also helped to avoid uncomfortable discussions about conflicting goals.
Because on the one hand a clear rejection of de-industrialization, but on the other hand phasing out coal and nuclear power at the same time was only a convincing narrative because one supposedly did not have to worry about the reliable supply of cheap natural gas.
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Now the reality has arrived with full force: It is currently only possible to a limited extent to replace the imported Russian gas with other gas imports, such as liquid gas, especially since the infrastructure for receiving and forwarding it is not yet sufficiently available.
Switching to coal and oil would be harmless for climate protection, at least in the short term, thanks to the European emissions trading system.
Nevertheless, it will be essential to massively reduce demand.
However, this is associated with welfare losses.
Expand energy supply - without ideological blinders
Therefore, the energy supply must be expanded without ideological blinkers: in the short term, coal and nuclear power plants must run longer, at the same time we must enter the hydrogen economy now, even if it cannot be fully “green” at the beginning.
In the longer term, we should then make sure that we no longer make ourselves so dependent on a single country, so that a situation like the current one does not repeat itself.
About the author:
Prof. Dr.
Christoph M. Schmidt is President of the RWI - Leibniz Institute for Economic Research and Professor at the Ruhr University Bochum.
From 2009 to 2020 he was a member of the German Council of Economic Experts, from March 2013 to February 2020 he was its chairman.
He has been a member since October 2019 and co-chairman since March 2020 of the Franco-German Council of Economic Experts.