Pressure mounts on Merkel to drop plans to close nuclear plants

By Judy Dempsey

Published: July 2, 2007

BERLIN: One day before an important government strategy session on energy, Chancellor Angela Merkel faced increased pressure Monday from her own camp to reverse course on closing Germany's nuclear power plants, despite public opposition, as a way to help fight global warming.

Roland Koch, the conservative state premier of Hesse, said it was time the government reconsidered the coalition agreement it made with the Social Democrats in November 2005, when Merkel was about to take office. That agreement stipulated that all nuclear power plants should be phased out, as the previous government, led by Social Democrats, decided earlier.

Koch, often seen as a rival to Merkel within the conservative Christian Democratic party, said in an interview on German television that if the government was serious about tackling greenhouse emissions, then nuclear power would provide a viable and clean alternative. The plants, he added, were "of a technically high standard" that would provide energy efficiency, energy security and reduce carbon emissions

With Germany committed to reducing carbon emissions by 20 percent by 2020, Koch's call could add to a debate that has long polarized Germany.

The conservatives have tended to support the nuclear power industry, while public opinion is largely opposed.

Merkel, who has made a reduction of greenhouse gases one of her main issues, has not yet been drawn into the debate over nuclear power. But the topic is likely to be raised during the high-level meeting Tuesday, which is supposed to decide a long-term energy policy in a country with one of the most powerful anti-nuclear movements among the 27 EU member states.

The last nuclear power reactor in Germany is scheduled to close in 15 years, following the decision taken by Gerhard Schröder's coalition of Social Democrats and Greens in 1999. The grand coalition of Christian Democrats and Social Democrats confirmed that decision when Merkel took power even though her conservative allies have since been increasingly uncomfortable with it.

Michael Müller, the Social Democrat secretary of state in the Environment Ministry, said Monday that the conservatives "must accept the coalition agreement." He said the debate over nuclear energy was being driven by the big power companies, which were more interested in profit than dealing with climate change. Several of the nuclear power plants are based in Hesse, where Koch is seeking re-election next year.

Nuclear power supplies 12 percent of German energy and a quarter of its electricity, according to the International Energy Agency in Paris. In a report on the German energy sector published last month, the agency called on the government to reconsider its decision to phase out nuclear power.

Besides forgoing the benefit of reducing greenhouse emissions, it said that "losing the nuclear option will have a significant impact on energy security, economic efficiency, environmental sustainability and energy diversification."

Other energy experts have challenged assertions that nuclear power was needed to help reduce carbon emissions, saying there were other options available.

"We need a future without nuclear energy," Klaus Töpfer, a former conservative environment minister and former director of the United Nations Environment Program, said in an interview with the Neue Osnabrücker Zeitung. Töpfer said all the interested parties had to sit down "to consider as soon as possible how to develop renewable energies and increase their efficiency."

Merkel, a scientist who was environment minister during the 1990s, has yet to weigh in. Her energy advisers are exploring ways to build more combined heat and power plants, which are considered energy efficient and have very low carbon emissions.

Analysts said Merkel's energy policy was being constrained by the lack of any clear consensus at the EU level over how to implement a decision made at a summit meeting in March, when leaders agreed to pursue a reduction of at least 20 percent in greenhouse-gas emissions, based on 1990 levels, by the year 2020.

Any decision reached would have significant repercussions on the costs of reducing greenhouse gases in Germany, said analysts.

Merkel wants to push through on the EU level what is called a "fair burden-sharing mechanism" that would take into account the emission reductions achieved so far in the member states.

According to a new energy report by the German Institute for Economic Research in Berlin, if European burden-sharing were fairly distributed and if Germany were to exploit all its energy efficiency potentials, "Germany's climate protection costs would amount to a total of around €1.9 billion," or $2.6 billion, a year, said Claudia Kemfert, one of the report's authors.

If Germany could not negotiate a fair distribution of the burden and could not exploit energy efficiency potential, Kemfert said that the costs would increase to around €5.7 billion a year.