The politics of phase-out

Abstract

The German decision to phase out nuclear energy following the Fukushima crisis builds on earlier political decisions to support the growth of renewable electricity, to improve energy efficiency, and to turn Germany toward sustainable energy and away from nuclear power. Germany is now embarking on what is known as the Energiewende, a plan to turn the entire economy to a low-carbon energy structure that does not make use of nuclear energy. The last nuclear power plants are scheduled to be shut down in 2022. Although there are still many skeptics of the phase-out plan, it has support across the political spectrum; Chancellor Angela Merkel of the Christian Democratic Union sees this as one of her top priorities, as do the opposition Greens and Social Democratic Party. In part, this support stems from the financial benefits that the shift to renewables has brought to many small- and medium-sized German businesses. The expansion of renewable energy capacity has been dramatic and now accounts for one-quarter of electricity production, up from about 3 percent in 1990.

The explosions and meltdowns at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station on March 11, 2011 occurred almost exactly 25 years after the Chernobyl nuclear accident. The Fukushima disaster also came less than five months after the conservative ruling-coalition government in Germany fulfilled an earlier campaign promise, pushing through a controversial amendment to the Atomic Energy Law and putting the brakes on a nuclear phase-out passed into law in 2001 by a liberal coalition.

The conservative coalition gave the nuclear operators hope that they might have a future after all when it passed the amendment, commonly referred to as “the phase-out of the phase-out” (Ausstieg aus dem Ausstieg), which allowed the country’s nuclear plants to run an additional eight to 14 years, depending on their age. Almost instantly, Fukushima crushed those hopes.

In Japan, the fate of the country’s 50 still-functional nuclear reactors remains uncertain, as the government and industry, which seek a continuation of nuclear energy, confront a population that would like a rapid shutdown of the nuclear fleet. In contrast, in Germany the decision to phase out the nuclear sector happened within a few short months—and some would argue within days—of the Fukushima reactor meltdowns. Not only did the conservative coalition backtrack on its reactor-life-extension legislation, it pushed through a new nuclear shutdown plan that went beyond what the Social Democratic Party and Green Party had proposed a decade earlier. Eight nuclear power plants were closed immediately, leaving just nine to be shut down over the course of the next decade.

Why is it that Germany, more than 700 miles from Chernobyl and some 6,000 miles from Fukushima, reacted so strongly against nuclear energy? In large part, the decisive, post-Fukushima shift away from nuclear energy was the result of long-term trends in German politics that led the country away from nuclear energy and toward greater support of renewable energy sources.

Fukushima and European nuclear energy politics

Antipathy to nuclear energy has a long history in Europe. In a 1978 referendum, Austrians voted against nuclear power, and as a result, the fully constructed Zwetendorf Nuclear Power Plant was never put into operation. Denmark’s parliament decided against nuclear energy production in 1985. Greece long ago rejected nuclear energy; a Greek finance minister explained in a 2007 interview that the decision was based on the country’s relatively small size and its seismic instability (Lekakis, 2007).

Although the governments of the Czech Republic, France, the Netherlands, Poland, and the United Kingdom pledged continued support for their nuclear programs after the Fukushima accident, others are now following the path of the early nuclear naysayers. After Fukushima, Switzerland—which has five nuclear reactors that generate about 40 percent of the country’s electricity—announced that it will phase out nuclear energy by 2034. In Italy, the Berlusconi government put its plans to restart a nuclear energy program to the ballot; in a binding referendum held in June 2011, the government’s plan was rejected by 94 percent of voters. The Belgian government has announced its intention to reduce dependence on nuclear energy and aims for a phase-out by 2025 if means are found to replace the 50 percent of electricity that is currently generated from nuclear power. Even in France, which produces about 75 percent of its electricity in nuclear plants, President François Hollande has made clear his opposition to his predecessor’s plans to expand the country’s dependence on nuclear energy and has talked about reducing the level to about 50 percent.

In Europe, Fukushima did not end reliance on nuclear power. But the accident did largely dash hopes of a broad nuclear renaissance, and in Germany, Fukushima tipped a precarious political balance definitively— and, it seems, permanently—against nuclear power and toward renewable energy sources.

Prelude to the first phase-out

The German decision to abandon nuclear energy is especially significant because of the country’s economic size (it accounts for about one-fifth of the European Union’s gross domestic product) and its industrial structure. Germany is a major producer and exporter of machinery, automobiles, and chemicals. Stability in the electricity supply is critical.

At the same time, Germany has some of the world’s most ambitious greenhouse gas emission-reduction targets: a 40 percent reduction in carbon dioxide emissions from 1990 levels by 2020 and an 80 percent minimum reduction by 2050. Nuclear energy accounted for about 23 percent of electricity production at the time of Fukushima. The decision to phase out nuclear energy, therefore, means not only replacing an important source of electricity, but also doing so in a way that does not lead to increased greenhouse gas emissions.

Many factors have influenced the German decision to exit the nuclear energy industry. In few countries are anti-nuclear sentiments as strong as in Germany. These sentiments have built up over decades. They are tied in part to the country’s unique history as a land divided by the Cold War, and in part to concerns that war between the Soviet Union and the United States would make Germany, literally, ground zero for nuclear weapons used by both sides.

Also, Germany has a vibrant civil society that formed in reaction to the country’s wartime past, to its patriarchal and elitist decision-making structures, and to its widespread environmental problems. Despite their many ideological differences, the peace, anti-nuclear, and women’s movements that formed in the 1970s succeeded in shaking up German politics in important ways that included the formation of a Green Party. Early on, many of the largest and most powerful environmental groups took a stance opposing nuclear energy. Over the course of the next decades, they staged regular protest actions against nuclear energy facilities, the transport of spent fuel, and nuclear waste storage sites (Glaser, 2012; Rucht, 1990).

Germany has a mixed electoral system, in which half of the members of the lower house of parliament (the Bundestag) are elected through a first-past-the-post system (i.e., the candidate with the largest percentage of the vote wins) and half through a party list and proportional representation system (i.e., each party gets seats relative to the percentage of the vote it wins and fills the seats from a pre-determined list of candidates—a party list). This system made it possible for Green Party candidates to be elected through the party list without needing to win majorities in specific races.

In 1983, the Green Party was, for the first time, voted into the federal parliament with just over 5 percent of the vote. The Greens brought their staunchly anti-nuclear position into parliamentary debates and pressured the two major parties—the conservative Christian Democratic Union and the liberal Social Democratic Party—to pay greater attention to environmental concerns.

Still, on their own, it is doubtful that the Greens could have tipped the scales against the nuclear industry. Highly important to the changing political context was the Social Democratic Party’s decision to reject nuclear energy after the Chernobyl nuclear accident. This shift constitutes a major political difference between Germany and France, which also has an anti-nuclear Green Party, but where the Socialist Party has remained committed to nuclear energy. The Social Democratic Party in Germany had long been divided on the nuclear question; the Social Democrats’ change in position made for a viable anti-nuclear coalition that simply needed a window of opportunity to push through its anti-nuclear agenda.

The window opened after the 1998 federal election. Combined, the Social Democratic Party and Green Party did well enough in the election to form a coalition government. The coalition made a nuclear energy phase-out one of its highest priorities and succeeded in passing a nuclear phase-out law—over considerable opposition from the Christian Democrats, the Free Democratic Party, and the energy utilities—in 2001 (Mez and Piening, 2002).

Even with strong public sentiment against nuclear energy and electoral success by parties on the left, a decision to phase out nuclear energy would have been difficult had it not been for the growth of the German renewable energy industry. By 2000, the wind energy sector in Germany had reached revenues of 1.7 billion euros and employed 25,000 people, directly or indirectly (ECOTEC, 2010). ¹ Entrepreneurs are critical to the promotion of new technological ideas, and many small industries began to pursue alternative energy alongside the large energy companies’ renewable energy departments.

Key political figures from across the political spectrum were also critical in supporting renewables legislation. These include former environment ministers Klaus Töpfer (Christian Democrats), Jürgin Trittin (Greens), and Sigmar Gabriel (Social Democrats) and parliamentarians like Hermann Scheer and Hans Josef Fell of the Greens, but also Josef Göppel from the Christian Socialist Union (Geldinfirmation, 2011). In contrast with many other countries, where there is a strong divide on whether support for renewable energy makes economic sense, in Germany there is relatively wide agreement that it is critical to the country’s future.

Policy instruments for renewable energy

Helmut Kohl, a Christian Democrat, was the chancellor of Germany during the Chernobyl meltdown in 1986. He reacted to the crisis by establishing a Ministry for the Environment, Nature Conservation and Nuclear Safety. Shortly after its founding, this ministry was given responsibility for renewable energy regulation and has been an ardent supporter within the government of renewable energy and energy efficiency ever since.

Under the leadership of Environment Minister Klaus Töpfer, the government introduced a new regulatory framework for the promotion of renewable energy. The 1990 renewable electricity feed-in law, one of the first of its kind in the world, required grid operators to purchase renewable electricity from third-party generators at 65 to 90 percent of the retail price. The conventional energy utilities did not strongly oppose the law, probably in part because of Chernobyl, but also because renewable energy was at the time viewed as a niche source that was not a threat to other forms of energy. Passed with a strong majority, the renewable feed-in law provided the room necessary for the renewable energy industry to experiment, gain experience, and prove itself a viable source of power.

The real takeoff for renewables, however, came with the passage of the Renewable Energy Law of 2000, which replaced the feed-in law. The main innovation of this legislation was its guarantee of feed-in prices for 15- to 20-year time horizons for renewable energy. The law has been modified numerous times to adjust the level of the feed-in tariff, rebalancing it as conditions changed with time. The most recent rebalancing occurred in the summer of 2012, when the support level was reduced for photovoltaic sources. New initiatives to support offshore wind are also being pursued. The changes in the feed-in tariffs and related laws reflect reductions in the costs of the technologies as well as new expectations regarding the amounts of electricity various renewables will likely provide. ²

Opposition to the first nuclear phase-out

Although support for renewable energy as a contributor to the energy mix has extended across the German political spectrum for several decades now, the idea that renewables could be the mainstay of the electricity sector—let alone the entire energy sector—has been a more controversial political idea. In the pre-Fukushima period, powerful elements of the Christian Democratic Union (although not all within the party), their Bavarian sister party, the Christian Socialist Union, and the Free Democratic Party continued to view nuclear energy favorably, or at least as a necessary bridging technology.

It was these parties’ view that the Chernobyl nuclear accident occurred because nuclear safety, technology, and transparency standards in the Soviet Union were inadequate. They argued that German nuclear power plants did not use Soviet-style technologies and that German safety standards would prevent a Chernobyl-type accident.

Of course, there were Soviet-style reactors in the former East Germany, one of which had come close to a core meltdown in the mid-1970s—information that was not known in the West until the Berlin Wall fell in 1989. Soon after German unification, these reactors, which did not meet West German safety standards, were shut down and decommissioning began. The discussion about the future of nuclear thus revolved around the nuclear power plants in the West.

The conservative political parties and the four main utility companies in Germany—E.ON RWE, Vatenfall, and enBW—saw nuclear energy as important to the German energy mix and the provision of a stable electricity supply. They also argued that nuclear energy was cheaper than other electricity forms and that an early shutdown of the nuclear power plants would put German industry at a competitive disadvantage. When the first phase-out law was being negotiated in 2000 and 2001, the industry did succeed in hard-fought negotiations with the Social Democratic and Green Party coalition to keep the nuclear power plants operating for what is equivalent to about a 32-year lifetime. Although it was less than the 35 years the industry wanted, the utilities managed to push through a combined cap of 2,623 billion kilowatt hours on lifetime production for the country’s 19 nuclear power plants, meaning that the industry would have some flexibility in regard to the actual shutdown date (World Nuclear Association, 2012). By running power plants at less than full capacity, operators could, for example, stretch out the final end date of the phase-out. The legislation went into effect in 2002.

Even so, the conservative parties and the utility industry remained opposed to the phase-out, arguing that nuclear power was critical for meeting climate change targets. Under an agreement made among European Union member states as to how Europe would meet its target to reduce its greenhouse gases under the Kyoto Protocol, Germany agreed to reduce its carbon dioxide emissions to 21 percent below 1990 levels by 2012. Nuclear energy was portrayed as an important bridging technology, producing electricity without greenhouse gas emissions as renewable energy technologies were developed.

In 2005, a grand coalition between the Christian Democratic Union and the Social Democratic Party formed. Due to the Social Democrats’ continued influence, the nuclear phase-out agreement held, despite the displeasure of the major utility companies and some energy-intensive industries. To placate heavy industries, including aluminum and steel producers, the government exempted them from having to pay the added cost of renewable energy. These costs fall on households and small businesses.

Phase-out of the phase-out

The 2009 federal elections gave the conservative parties—the Christian Democrats and the Free Democrats—their chance to slow (and possibly eventually reverse) the nuclear phase-out decision. As part of their 124-page coalition agreement (Hengst et al., 2009), they pushed an amendment to the Atomic Energy Law through the Bundestag, the lower house of the parliament, using a political maneuver that, they declared, allowed them to circumvent a vote in the Bundesrat, the upper house, where the Länder, or state governments, are represented and the opposition had the majority. The maneuver was criticized as anti-democratic, but with the signature of German President Christian Wulff, the extension became law, despite threats to challenge the constitutionality of the decision-making process (Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, 2010; Lang and Mutschler, 2010a, 2010b).

The phase-out of the phase-out was unpopular among many in the German public. An opinion survey conducted by the newspaper Die Zeit in July 2010 found 49 percent of the population against any extension and another 29 percent supporting limits of an extension of nuclear plant lifetimes to a maximum of 10 years (Die Zeit, 2010). The decision to reverse the phase-out led to nationwide demonstrations. Beyond protesting the decision, however, opponents of the decision could do little, because, though opposition was strong, it was not overwhelming. Before the decision to extend the nuclear plants’ running times, the German press published articles that spoke of a growing acceptance of nuclear energy. The news journal Focus, for example, reported in April 2010 that a majority still found nuclear energy would be needed for some time and that 44 percent of respondents thought it should be used longer than planned.

Still, support for nuclear power varied significantly by party: 62 percent of Christian Democratic Union supporters and 60 percent of Free Democratic Party voters favored some extension of nuclear plant lifetimes, but only 35 percent of Social Democratic Party voters, 21 percent of Green sympathizers, and 33 percent of the small Left Party did so (Focus, 2010). But for Fukushima, Germany may have continued its nuclear energy well into the 2030s, at a minimum.

The triple disaster

The Fukushima triple disaster—the earthquake, tsunami, and nuclear meltdowns—shattered the hopes of the German nuclear industry. When a nuclear catastrophe happened in the former Soviet Union, it could be explained away as a result of poor technological standards. An accident of the magnitude of what happened in the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station was simply not supposed to happen in a technologically advanced country like Japan.

In Germany, televised coverage of the unfolding crisis at the Fukushima Daiichi and Daini plants brought back memories of Chernobyl; the many problems that surfaced regarding crisis management and information disclosure were especially reminiscent of 1986. The Chernobyl nuclear accident had panicked the German population. Its radioactive plume spread out over northern and central Europe, depositing measurable radioactive contamination, especially in areas where it rained. In Germany, the media and nongovernmental organizations warned citizens against drinking milk, eating leafy vegetables and mushrooms, and letting their children play in the sand.

Twenty-five years later, as Germans watched on television, the Fukushima nuclear crisis led to an expanding evacuation zone and reports that drinking water as far away as Tokyo should not be mixed into baby formula. The Christian Democratic Union reacted quickly to the new reality the disaster had created, convincing its coalition partners of the need to shift policy direction.

On March 15, 2011, as the nuclear crisis was still unfolding in Japan, Chancellor Angela Merkel announced a three-month moratorium on the nuclear extension plan, a safety check of all nuclear power plants, and the shutdown of the seven oldest plants—those that went into operation before 1980—for the length of the moratorium. (An eighth nuclear plant was already shut down due to an earlier accident.) The temporary shutdown was to become permanent by the middle of the summer.

The Reactor Safety Commission was charged with advising the government on the technical and operational safety of Germany’s nuclear power plants in light of the new information from Fukushima. In addition, the chancellor established an Ethics Commission for a Safe Energy Supply, co-directed by former Environment Minister Klaus Töpfer and President of the German Research Foundation Matthias Kleiner. The Ethics Commission was given the mandate to produce a report on the ethical dimensions of energy use. Both committee reports were intended to guide the government on its policy decision about how to address nuclear energy in light of what happened in Japan.

The Reactor Safety Commission report was issued in the middle of May 2011 (Reactor Safety Commission, 2011). The commission concluded that safety standards at German nuclear facilities were high, but the seven oldest nuclear power plants had not been designed to withstand a jetliner crash. This failing was one of the justifications given for shutting down the oldest reactors.

At the end of May, the Ethics Commission presented its report, which argued that there are many ethical dilemmas associated with nuclear energy, including those related to the release of radioactivity in major accidents and the problems of nuclear waste storage. Moreover, the commission contended that there are alternative forms of low-carbon energy that are safer than nuclear energy, and it supported a shift to a renewable energy-dominated system (Ethikkommission für Sichere Energieversorgung, 2011).

In July 2011, the Bundestag voted overwhelmingly for legislation shutting down eight nuclear power plants and scheduling the shutdown of the remaining nine by 2022. One plant is to be shut down in each of the years 2015, 2017, and 2019, and the remaining six are to be taken off line in 2021 and 2022.

The challenges ahead

The Energiewende is the German name for the multi-decade energy transition on which the country has embarked. There has been a dramatic increase in renewable energy capacity in the past few years, and Germany now gets one-quarter of its electricity from renewables. At this pace of growth in the renewable sector, the country could conceivably overachieve and surpass its goal of a 35 percent renewable energy mix by 2020.

Still, there are longer-run obstacles. It is expected, for example, that offshore wind will need to play a major role in Germany’s renewable energy budget. Technical challenges and the high cost of the cables needed to bring the electricity to shore have put this part of the country’s renewable energy project behind schedule.

Another major challenge is the need to develop a new high-voltage grid infrastructure that can transfer electricity from the northern parts of Germany, where it is produced, to the country’s southern regions. This will require greater cooperation between the federal and state governments and new modes of public participation in decisions about the siting of power lines.

One of the most difficult aspects of the Energiewende—both in political and economic terms—is the question of who will pay for it. Germany uses a mechanism known as the merit order effect, giving renewable electricity priority access to the grid; when there is electricity from wind or solar power, it goes into the grid first. Renewable electricity producers benefit from feed-in tariffs. These provide 15 to 20 years of fixed prices for renewable energy that is generated and sold into the grid. Consumers bear the costs of these extra fees paid to renewable energy producers. When there was only a small amount of renewable energy in the German system, feed-in tariffs were not a big issue, but as the share of renewables has grown, so too has the cost to the German consumer.

In contrast, big industry is exempted from paying the added costs for renewables as it benefits from lower electricity prices than it would otherwise pay due to the increase of renewable energy in the market. Those lower prices are a result of the merit order effect, which gives first entry into the grid to energy sources with the lowest marginal costs (i.e., the cost of producing one additional unit of electricity). Because they have essentially no added marginal costs, solar and wind get first entry into the grid. As a result, the price of electricity at peak periods—which tend to be in the middle of the day when there is sun—has fallen on the power exchange, benefiting big industry. In the past, peak demand was met by starting up coal-fired power plants; now photovoltaics and wind are covering increasingly large shares of this daytime demand (Renewables International, 2012).

Placating major industries and the four major utility companies, which account for 80 percent of electricity generation in Germany, with exemptions from the added costs of renewables may produce political benefits in the short term. In the long term, such a policy is likely to face serious political problems due to rising costs to consumers. For the time being, energy efficiency initiatives could be the best means for keeping overall consumer energy prices from rising too far. Even so, the question of how long big industry will be exempted from the cost of the shift to renewable energy sources is sure to be raised in the near future.

The politics of a renewable future

The German phase-out of its nuclear industry is not simply a decision about one energy source. It is also a decision to wean the country from costly, polluting fossil energy sources and shift dramatically in the direction of sustainable energy. The German population is highly concerned about climate change. A 2011 Eurobarometer survey found that 66 percent of German respondents saw climate change as “the single most serious problem facing the world as a whole” (European Commission, 2011). Although German leaders and citizens have expressed considerable frustration that other major countries, especially the United States, appear uncommitted to action on climate change, there is also a general sense in Germany that the nuclear phase-out and Energiewende can create a new model that influences environmental and energy policy decisions elsewhere.

It would be wrong to think, however, that the Germans are acting out of purely altruistic or environmental motives. There is considerable optimism that, despite the huge challenges and the substantial early economic costs of the Energiewende, it will eventually result in significant economic gain. The previous 20 years or so of investment in renewable energy and energy efficiency improvements have spawned new industries. By the time of the Fukushima disaster, the renewable energy sector in Germany was estimated to support 370,000 jobs, and Germany was a global leader in renewable energy exports and patents (Federal Ministry for the Environment, Nature Conservation and Nuclear Safety, 2011). Since Fukushima, the capacity growth in renewables has been strong. According to the German Association for Energy and Water Industries, in the first six months of 2012, renewables supplied 25 percent of electricity consumed, up from about 17 percent at the end of 2010. About 9.2 percent of this total came from wind, 5.7 percent from biomass, a remarkable 5.3 percent from photovoltaic (a 47 percent increase over the same period a year earlier), about 4 percent from hydro, and less than 1 percent from waste incineration (Bundesverbandes der Energie- und Wasserwirtschaft, 2012).

Strong public support for sustainable economic structures has come from local and regional governments, many of which were early pioneers in generating and implementing new sustainability programs and ideas. Many communities have succeeded in developing passive housing that, by design, requires far less energy to heat and cool, expanding the use of biogas and combined heat and power (i.e., cogeneration, which integrates the production of electricity and usable heat from coal- and gas-fired power stations), reducing waste generation, developing public transportation systems, and encouraging bicycling. These efforts aim to save money on energy bills, make communities more attractive to live in, and support entrepreneurial thinkers. Such communities can be found across Germany; their supporters come from all political parties.

In Bayern, a stronghold of the Christian Socialist Union—a regional sister party to the conservative Christian Democratic Union—many farmers and investors have profited from feed-in tariff support for solar photovoltaics. Many of Germany’s famous small- and medium-sized enterprises have been beneficiaries of the country’s push toward a more sustainable energy structure. In 2007, environmental technologies accounted for 8 percent of the country’s GDP. Expectations are that they will hit the 14 percent mark in 2020 (Bundesministerium für Umwelt, Naturschutz und Reaktorsicherheit, 2009). Even within the conservative political parties, the Energiewende enjoys substantial support.

Fukushima changed the nature of the energy debate in Germany primarily by building a cross-party consensus—albeit one that some politicians in the conservative parties joined only grudgingly—on the phase-out of nuclear energy. The Energiewende will take decades to fully implement and will surely hit obstacles on the way, but it is a development that brings with it exciting opportunities for Germany and, perhaps, a blueprint for the world.