The last three German nuclear power plants will be shut down on Saturday.
In an interview, energy expert and economist Veronika Grimm explains what this means for the economy.
Prof. Grimm, on Saturday the last three remaining nuclear power plants in Germany will go offline.
Many companies and consumers are concerned about this.
They also?
I find the decision unfortunate.
The framework conditions for our energy policy had changed drastically with the gas crisis: gas is now much less attractive as a bridging technology and may not be available to the extent that we need it.
Politicians should have taken this into account.
Letting the nuclear power plants run for another three to four years would have given us some breathing room.
Then the electricity prices would be lower, we would have less electricity from coal and therefore lower certificate prices in European emissions trading and less electricity from gas.
I still don't understand why these benefits were swept under the carpet.
Instead, gloomy visions are now making the rounds.
Some observers fear, for example, that electricity could be turned off for major industrial consumers next winter because wind and solar systems are not delivering enough and we are not getting enough electricity from neighboring countries such as France.
How realistic is such a blackout scenario?
We are not over the mountain in the energy crisis, that is correct.
The coming winter can be challenging again.
China has now ended the lockdowns.
If gas demand from Asia returns dynamically and it gets cold here, things could get uncomfortable again.
High gas prices or bottlenecks are possible.
In any case, gas must be saved further to avoid this.
And when it comes to electricity, it may of course be the case that we are dependent on our European neighbors - on French nuclear power and Polish coal-fired power plants - if the production of renewables is low.
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Prof. Veronika Grimm: Leaving nuclear power is "unfortunate".
© IPON/Imago
Critics therefore accuse the traffic light of double standards.
But what does this development mean for companies and consumers: is electricity becoming more expensive now?
Compared to a scenario in which the nuclear power plants would continue to run, the electricity will of course be more expensive.
Incidentally, this will also be the case in neighboring countries thanks to the European electricity market, so we will have a negative effect on other EU countries.
But no one is observing this counterfactual scenario, so politicians can easily sweep it under the carpet.
If you point this out, you sometimes get an outraged reaction.
Then I think: You can politically decide against letting the nuclear power plants continue to run, but you shouldn't fool the population.
It is highly problematic that the advantages have not at least been honestly weighed against the disadvantages.
This is not least about our reputation in Europe.
Abroad, there is sometimes little understanding for the German decision.
When it comes to electricity prices, Germany is already at the bottom in an international comparison.
Many companies no longer want to accept this.
According to the DIHK, more and more companies are relocating their business abroad, also because of the high energy prices in this country.
How dangerous are high electricity costs for the German economy?
The whole economy will not move away just because we turn off the nuclear power plants.
They recently contributed about six percent to electricity generation.
But you can get bogged down if you make suboptimal decisions too often.
Namely?
The problem is that we like to get out without having consistently prepared the alternatives - with the nuclear power plants, from coal and now quite abruptly from fossil heat generation.
We should get more into future-oriented technologies, and without narrowing it down to electrification as much as it is happening at the moment.
This is dangerous if the corresponding plans don't work out.
what has to happen
We should establish effective emissions trading in all sectors and give the per capita income from emissions trading back to the people as climate money.
This would provide the financial incentive to avoid emissions, but people would not be overburdened.
Especially for the low-income groups, the climate money would exceed the expenditure on CO2 emissions - people don't have such a high carbon footprint.
The high costs of emissions should fuel a dynamic in the development of climate-friendly alternatives.
At the same time, of course, the prerequisites would have to be extensively created so that emissions can actually be avoided, for example through appropriate offers in transport and in the heating sector, the development of infrastructure and the rapid decarbonisation of electricity generation.
By 2030, the coal-fired power plants should also be off the grid.
The federal government wants to close the corresponding supply gaps by expanding renewables and new gas-fired power plants.
Isn't the traffic light here a bit too ambitious?
In fact, many things have to happen at once.
The demand for electricity will increase from around 580 TWh today to around 750 TWh in 2030 due to increased electrification.
It must be possible to quadruple the rate of expansion of renewable energies.
In addition to renewable energies, we need around 20 to 30 GW of gas-fired power plant capacity.
In the future, these gas-fired power plants must be operated with hydrogen in a climate-neutral manner, and of course we also have to procure it.
We will only produce a small part of it in Germany.
We have to import most of it.
We then also need the infrastructure to transport the hydrogen and electricity and a lot of flexibility in the electricity system to cushion the fluctuation of the renewables.
But there is a lack of production capacity among the manufacturers of gas turbines.
To do this, the number of new wind turbines would have to double within a very short space of time.
Will we really be able to replace coal-fired power plants by 2030 without bottlenecks, or will it be tight for a stable power supply in Germany by then at the latest?
You can do it all, it's not necessarily the technical possibilities that fail, but the framework conditions for implementation.
Planning and approval is too slow.
Politicians intervene too dirigistically and in detail.
This narrows the range of options and can lead to dead ends.
If emissions trading were to be used, it would be clear that those who develop technologies and business models that avoid emissions can make money.
I would be pretty confident that the German companies would then quickly come up with pretty good solutions.
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