Paris criticized on Thursday the idea of a possible “revival offossil fuels” such as coal in Germany, at a time when the country is preparing to say goodbye to nuclear power for good.
“It goes without saying that the revival of fossil fuel energy to compensate for the exit of nuclear power is not in the direction of climate action that we all collectively carry at the European level,” said in particular the office of the Minister of Energy Transition Agnès Pannier-Runacher. “In addition, it emits emissions including sulfur that have an impact at the European level,” he added, in response to a journalist’s question about Germany during a presentation on climate issues at a G7 meeting in Japan.
In addition to their contribution to global warming, coal-fired power plants emit sulfur dioxide that is harmful to air quality. From Saturday, the last three nuclear reactors in operation in Germany, which provided 6% of the energy produced in the country in 2022, will be permanently shut down, 21 years after its decision to leave the atom.
On the other side of the Rhine, in France, 62.7% of the electricity produced was of nuclear origin in 2022. “Each country is responsible for its own energy choices (…) nevertheless we share the European objectives of decarbonization of the economy,” the ministry’s office also stressed. “We would like there to be a common and shared commitment to convergent actions towards the total exit of fossil fuels”, insisted the same source.
In Germany, coal still accounts for nearly a third of electricity production, structurally declining over the last decade, but with an 8% increase last year to compensate for the absence of Russian gas after the war in Ukraine. The German government assures that the increase will be temporary and maintains its goal of closing all of the country’s coal-fired power plants by 2038, many of them by 2030.
Germany is banking on wind and solar power to cover 80% of the country’s electricity needs by 2030. But many gas-fired power plants, also harmful to the climate, will also have to be built to compensate for the intermittency of renewables. For months, Paris and Berlin have been divided over the role of nuclear power in the future reform of the European electricity market.
