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Germany Goes Non-Nuclear, Maybe
Creative Accounting in Energy Economics
The failure of the Fukushima nuclear power plant in Japan has prompted the German government to accelerate plans to decommission all of its nuclear power plants by 2022. It claims to have a plan in place to replace Germany’s nuclear power with renewable resources, maintaining both current electrical production and prices.
Before I offer my comments, I would like to summarize Germany’s 2008 electrical production based on this webpage: http://www.euronuclear.org/info/encyclopedia/p/pow-gen-ger.htm:
Lignite Coal: 24%
Nuclear: 23%
Hard Coal: 20%
Natural Gas: 13%
Wind: 7%
Biomass: 4%
Hydro: 3%
Other: 3%
I admit that I’m not much of an expert in energy economics, but I would like to have asked the German government a few questions about their plans. Here goes:
Nuclear power plants require a great capital investment. By decommissioning them long before their useful lives are over, is this not a waste of society’s resources?
Let’s assume that renewable energy in Germany started 10 years ago. By the statistics stated above, the…
