CHANCELLOR ANGELA Merkel has promised Germany will double its renewable energy production within the next decade during which it now proposes to phase out entirely nuclear power production. It is what she insists will be a “safe, reliable and economically viable” energy transition, an eminently worthwhile, and challenging, ambition in its own right which should push up the share of renewable power from 16.5 to over 30 per cent of national energy use.
But, as the French, strong advocates of nuclear power, were quick to point out, that is still unlikely to prove sufficient to make up for the fifth of the country’s energy needs now supplied by nuclear power. Crucially, it will not end Germany’s need to rely on either strategically vulnerable natural gas from Russia, its own smokey coal, or nuclear-generated power of the imported variety – but someone else will be taking the risks involved in producing it.
Though her rationale may be not altogether consistent, Merkel’s unexpected volte face on nuclear power earlier this week reverts to a 10-year-old Social Democrat project for a nuclear-free Germany she had previously robustly rejected. It boldly steals Green clothes in the wake of the party’s recent dramatic regional gains.
It also represents a major shift in energy strategy at European level. Along with the decision last week by Switzerland to shut down its reactors once they reach their expected lifespan over two and a half decades, Merkel’s announcement will cut across the increasingly articulated case being made elsewhere, not least in Ireland, that nuclear power may be the green answer to global warming.
Once again it is the real experience of the apparent vulnerability of the industry to catastrophic failure that is shaping the debate. Just as Three Mile Island and Chernobyl turned the industry toxic in the public mind for a generation so too the aftershock from the Japanese earthquake and partial meltdown it set in motion at the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear complex is rewriting what is possible worldwide.
A divided Japan has reduced its nuclear energy ambitions. In the US and India the debate against nuclear power has been re-energised. The EU is placing a renewed emphasis on gas. Many reviews have been ordered elsewhere, although the Chinese, French and British remain strongly committed. What brave Irish politician is going to step out now against such a tide?