Germany's Rising Cost of Going Green

Japan’s 11 March Fukushima nuclear power disaster? No problem. Germany’s subsequent decision on 30 May, announced by German Chancellor Angela Merkel in the aftermath of Japan’s Fukushima nuclear disaster, that Germany would close all of its 18 nuclear power plants between 2015 and 2022? Big deal.

On 30 May, in the aftermath of Japan’s Fukushima nuclear disaster, German Chancellor Angela Merkel announced that Germany would close all of its 18 nuclear power plants between 2015 and 2022, which produce about 28 percent of the country's electricity. Eight have now been taken offline, and with the winter coming on Berlin is scrambling to make up the energy shortfall lest the country suffer blackouts combined with the need to import massive amounts of electricity. 

PBS correspondent Rick Karr reports on Germany’s plan to generate nearly all of its electricity from renewable sources and virtually eliminate its use of fossil fuels by 2050.

The worldwide implications for nuclear power advocates in light of the 11 March disaster at Japan’s Daichi Fukushima nuclear complex, battered first by an earthquake and a subsequent tsunami, are slowly unfolding. Nations committed to nuclear power are being subjected to a relentless PR barrage by nuclear construction firms, who stand to lose billions if current contracts are suspended or, even worse, cancelled.

Martin Peter Roth submits:Germany’s dramatic decision to close down by 2022 its nuclear plants – currently providing about a quarter of the country’s electricity needs – means a significant boost to its status as a renewable energy powerhouse.At the end of 2010 renewable sources were responsible for about 17% of the country’s electricity.

There’s a huge opportunity that the government, because it is so tightly tied to the private energy sector, has refused to acknowledge Japan is wasting the opportunity of the Fukushima disaster by failing to use the crisis and public opposition toward nuclear reactors to form an energy mix more reliant on renewable energy, Canadian author, environmentalist and geneticist David Suzuki says.