On the subject of energy, few decisions have disconcerted external observers as much as Germany's farewell to nuclear power even before coal. Faced with the urgency of climate change and the energy crisis triggered by the conflict in Ukraine, Berlin's move to abandon the atom before fossil fuels has attracted quite a bit of criticism. But to understand it, we need to immerse ourselves in the socio-political developments of post-war Germany, where anti-nuclearism preceded (and by a lot, too) the public discourse on the climate.
The roots of the German anti-nuclear movement
Opposition to nuclear power in Germany has its roots in the 70s, well before the 1986 Chernobyl disaster. Already in the 1971, a West German bestseller evocatively titled “Peacefully into Catastrophe: A Documentation of Nuclear Power Plants,” had brought national attention to the topic. Huge protests of hundreds of thousands of people (including the largest demonstration ever seen in the West German capital, Bonn) had made the anti-nuclear movement a major political force.
The motivations for this movement? Many. How many do you want? Distrust in technocracy, ecological, environmental and security fears, suspicions that nuclear energy could favor the proliferation of atomic weapons. In general, total opposition to the concentration of power (a feeling that is more than understandable in Germany).
Renewable “policies”
In the fight against nuclear power, German activists supported renewable alternatives such as solar and wind, embracing their promise of greater self-sufficiency, community participation and citizen empowerment (“energy democracy”).
Support for renewables, essentially, less linked to the reduction of CO2 and more oriented towards resetting power relations. Alternative energy would be the path to decentralized, bottom-up generation rather than top-down production and distribution. The path towards protecting local ecosystems and promoting peace (important in the context of the Cold War).
The birth of a block
The German anti-nuclear movement, you will have understood, became a fundamental hard core for the creation of the German Green Party (today the most influential in the world) which emerged in 1980 and entered the national government for the first time from 1998 to 2005 as a partner of minority of social democrats.
The "red-green" coalition is the one that banned the construction of new reactors, announced the closure of existing ones by 2022 and approved a series of laws to support renewable energy.
An impulse which, in turn, gave a boost to national boom in renewables, which jumped from 6,3% of gross domestic electricity consumption in 2000 to 51,8% in 2023. Figures even more remarkable if we consider the contribution of citizens, who in 2019 owned as much as 40,4% (and over 50% in the first years of that decade) of the total installed renewable energy generation capacity in Germany. Community wind cooperatives, agricultural biogas plants, photovoltaics on the roofs of houses: the Germans were very determined.
The German transition
Unlike other countries' more recent energy transitions, aimed at achieving net-zero emissions targets using any low-carbon technology available, Germany's famous "Energiewende" sought from the beginning to move away both from energy-intensive sources carbon and from nuclear ones towards predominantly renewable alternatives.
It is no coincidence that the book credited with having coined the term Energiewende (precisely: "energy transition") was dated 1980. And it was significantly titled "Energie-Wende: growth and prosperity without oil and uranium" and it was published by a think tank founded… by anti-nuclear activists.
Very clearly: “Environment” in Germany means first and foremost “no nuclear power”. And it's a cultural issue. Point.
A farewell without regrets?
Despite some public protests to the contrary (the main opposition party, the CDU, said in January that Germany “cannot do without the nuclear option at the moment”), few political leaders privately think the country will reverse or realistically can reverse course.
Talking about reintroducing nuclear power in Germany is "illusory" even for insiders. Investors would prefer to put their money in safer investments: it would take decades to build new nuclear power plants and some say electricity is no longer the sector of concern, given the rapid development of renewables. Attention, if anything, has shifted to heating and transport.
Meanwhile, predictions that a nuclear exit would force Germany to use more coal and face price rises and supply problems they did not come true. And this is a fact.
In March 2023 (one month before the shutdown) the distribution of German electricity generation was for 53% renewable, 25% coal, 17% gas and 5% nuclear. In March 2024, it was for the 60% renewable, 24% coal and 16% gas.
There is also another fact, however. And it is the reduction of German industrial production: an "impoverishment" in which the abandonment of nuclear power could have played an important role, as hypothesized in this post the lawyer of the atom.
Nuclear power in Germany: whoever lives will see
The last year, however, has seen record production of renewable energy nationwide. A minimum of 60 years in the use of coal and the closure of 15 power plants, substantial cuts in emissions and falling energy prices.
The country's energy sector has apparently already moved on. In the words of one industry observer: “Once these nuclear plants shut down, they're out.” And there's no easy way back.
For better or worse, this technology (at least in its current form) is dead and buried here. And many Germans, until electoral evidence proves otherwise, will not miss it.
