With a mischievous smile and nonchalant attitude, Greta Thunberg was arrested by the German police on January 17, 2023, while attending a climate protest on the site of a coal-fired power plant. The images went around the globe, just as the world's foremost environmental activist had come to support anti-coal protests in Germany, where the government is trying to revive the exploitation of this highly polluting energy source in order to cope with cuts in Russian gas imports. 

Although Europe's largest economy, Germany has been severely affected by the energy crisis stemming from the war in Ukraine. Highly dependent on Russian gas, which accounted for half of its national consumption before the outbreak of the war, Germany is now actively looking for alternatives to regain its strategic independence vis-à-vis the Russian aggressor. 

Along with other European countries, Germany is seeking to reduce its imports of Russian energy in order to deprive Putin of the important funds generated by its sales, which are ultimately used to finance his war of aggression. Thanks to European efforts, imports of Russian energy in Europe have been divided by two since the start of the war, causing a shortfall of 160 million euros per day for Russia.

Still, as attempts to switch gas suppliers quickly proved insufficient, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz was forced to turn to other energy sources to diversify Germany’s domestic consumption, namely coal and the highly controversial nuclear power. 

Indeed, Germany had already embarked on the path of denuclearization of its energy twenty years ago. The decision to abandon nuclear power was taken by Gerhard Schröder in 2002, at a time when he needed this promise to forge an alliance with the anti-nuclear ecologist party “The Greens”, and thus ensure his re-election as German Chancellor. This promise only became concrete in 2011 when Angela Merkel's government significantly accelerated the pace of nuclear phase-out. Shaken by the Fukushima accident, the former Chancellor set 2022 as the definitive exit date for this energy. 

The current energy crisis has made the objectives set by Scholz’s predecessors untenable, leaving him with no choice but to delay this target. In September 2022, Olaf Scholz made a 180° turn by deciding that the last three German reactors would continue to operate up to April 2023 at least, thus postponing the date of the nuclear phase-out indefinitely. 

The news immediately provoked the anger of the Greens, who had agreed to keep only two plants on standby only to be used if absolutely necessary. For their part, environmental activists, like Great Thunberg, rushed to the reactivated coal-fired power plants to demonstrate their disagreement with the government’s new energy policy. But what choice did Germany really have? 

Committed to denuclearizing its energy since 2002, Germany has already divided by three the share of nuclear power in its energy mix. On the one hand, this has allowed the country to embark on a vast project to develop renewable energies, which now account for 40% of its energy mix, compared to a meager 10% in 2002. 

One could therefore consider that the decision to move away from nuclear power was a commendable environmental decision. The green aspect was in fact part of Angela Merkel's rhetoric when she announced that abandoning nuclear power would reduce Germany's greenhouse gas emissions through the development of renewable energies.  

Still, at the same time, the share of fossil fuels in the German energy mix has only decreased by 15%. This leaves Germany by far the biggest polluter in the EU, with almost twice the emissions of France. Though Germany is the most populated country in Europe, the comparison with France is interesting because the latter’s energy mix comprises 70% nuclear, 24% renewable, and only 1% fossil fuels. With a lower share of renewables in its energy mix, France still emits lower levels of greenhouse gasses than its neighbor across the Rhine precisely because nuclear power, highly developed in France, produces decarbonized energy. 

Finally, a recent survey showed that half of Germans wanted their country to continue using nuclear energy, with more than a quarter expressing the wish to see the share of nuclear power increase in their country's energy mix. 

The project of Gerhard Schröder, announced in 2002 and then accelerated by Angela Merkel in 2011, thus seems more questionable than ever. In addition to being unpopular and depriving Germany of any strategic independence from Russia today, the denuclearization of German energy has certainly not allowed the country to become an example of lower CO2 emissions.
Berlin's long-term goal is to increase the share of renewable energy in its energy mix to 80% by 2030, citing financial support for investments, hedging tools, and subsidizing innovation as the three core measures to achieve this target. Yet today, energy inflation has hit Germany hard, where households now spend about 5% of their income on energy, twice as much as in France. While nuclear power currently allows countries like France to reduce their energy dependence on Russia without resorting to more costly or less environmentally-friendly energy sources, Germany seems more trapped than ever by its decision to abandon this energy source a decade ago.