October 2011 issue of Freedom's Phoenix magazine - fr33aid

Germany - It’s Not Easy Being Green
By John Daly
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FORTY-ONE years ago on Sesame Street,
Kermit the frog sang a plaintive song, “It’s not
easy being green.”
In a gesture of solidarity, perhaps he should fax
the lyrics to German Chancellor Angela Merkel,
whose government is suddenly discovering the
costs of weaning itself off nuclear energy.
In the wake of Fukushima, German Chancellor
Angela Merkel announced on 30 May that Germany,
the world's fourth-largest economy and
Europe's biggest, would become the first industrialized
nation to shut down all of its 17 nuclear
power plants (NPPs) between 2015 and 2022,
an extraordinary commitment, given that Germany’s
17 NPPS Germany produce about 28
percent of the country's electricity and that the
country’s first NPP came online in 1969.
The seven nuclear power plants immediately
shut down after Fukushima include Biblis A
and B, Neckarwestheim 1, Brunsbuettel, Isar
1, Unterweser and Philippsburg 1 and the offline
reactor in Kruemmel. The remaining nine
to be shut down by 2022 are Grafenrheinfeld in
2015, Gundremmingen B in 2017, Philippsburg
II in 2019, Grohnde, Brokdorf, and Gundremmingen
C in 2021, Isar II, Neckarwestheim II
and Emsland in 2022.
Truly the end of an era.
Merkel added that her government’s goal was to
draw 35 percent of production from renewable
energy sources by 2022.
While Fukushima proved the final impetus for
the decision, Germany has long had one of the
most anti-nuclear green movements in Europe.
The Japanese meltdown was the final straw in
convincing the electorate that Three Mile Island,
Chernobyl and Fukushima, as well as hundreds
of smaller incidents that the risks inherent in
NPPs were in fact real and lethal, that nuclearwaste
storage was a problem yet to be resolved
and that renewable-alternative energy was the
way of the future.
Not that the decision was unanimous. The German
nuclear industry insisted that its shutdown
would cause major damage to the country's industrial
base and E.ON AG and Vattenfall Europe
AG announced their intention to sue for
billions of euros in compensation, with RWE
AG and EnBW Energie Baden-Wuerttemberg
AG expected to follow suit. As an immediate
indication of their displeasure, two months ago
Germany's four nuclear operators announced
that they would stop paying into a government
renewables fund, which was set up in September
2010 as compensation for the government
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agreeing to license nuclear plants for a longer
period.
Adding to awakening consumer anxiety about
“quality of life” issues, last month Germany’s
Federal Network Agency announced that it decided
not to keep any NPPs as back-up in case
of electricity shortfalls for the upcoming winter.
So, what to do?
Why, use Germany’s massive euro reserves to
buy in electricity from neighboring countries
to ease shortfalls during the bumpy transitional
period.
Neighbors only too glad to export electricity to
der Vaterland include Austria, the Czech Republic
and France.
And here’s where it gets interesting, as the latter
two nation’s electrical exports are generated
by… nuclear power.
Quite aside from the ideological contradictions
inherent in the policy, it won’t come cheap. In
a report last July Deutsche Bank noted that because
of the nuclear prohibition Germany will
become a net importer of about 4 terawatt hours
of power by the end of the year after exporting
14 terawatt hours in 2010.
In another sobering statistic from the Dena Energy
Agency, a research institute partly owned
by the German government, Germany will have
to spend nearly $14.3 billion over the next decade
to upgrade its electrical grid if the country
is to stop using neighboring networks.
Speaking of neighboring networks, importing
electricity from former communist Eastern European
states presents an additional range of
problems, as their elderly grids were built over
30 years ago solely to handle domestic demand,
years before the countries joined the European
power-trading system.
Not that the government hasn’t been warned – in
May national electricity-grid regulator Bundesnetzagentur
said that Germany’s unilateral decommissioning
of its NPPs risked straining
utility networks in at least seven neighboring
countries.
According to the European Nuclear Society, as
of January 2011 there were 195 nuclear plants
in operation and under construction in Europe.
No doubt all the operators of these NPPs will be
watching the German experience weaning itself
off its nuclear addition with great attention.
It’s not easy being green.
By. John C.K. Daly of Oilprice.com
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