Germany will depend “more and more” on French nuclear power to meet its needs, despite Berlin’s opposition to this source of energy, said Thursday the French Minister for Energy Transition Agnès Pannier-Runacher. “Germany risks becoming increasingly dependent on nuclear electricity from its neighbours,” she said in an interview with the German business daily Handelsblatt.
Berlin permanently closed its last nuclear reactors last April, ten years after Angela Merkel’s decision to accelerate the exit from the atom after the Fukushima disaster. At the same time, the country once again became a net importer of electricity, reversing the trend of previous months when it exported its electricity, in particular to France, where the nuclear power plants were under maintenance.
Currently, a third of imported electricity comes from nuclear, largely French, according to the think tank specializing in energy Agora Energiewende. According to specialists, it is difficult to say whether and to what extent this development is linked to the shutdown of the last three German power stations, which represented 6% of the electricity produced in Germany. Germany has already been a net importer of electricity at other times in the past.
On the German side, it is estimated that this reversal is linked to the current drop in energy prices, within the framework of the European market where electricity is sold and bought. “It happens that importing is cheaper than producing,” the head of the Federal Network Agency Klaus Müller recently declared in the press.
But for Agnès Pannier-Runacher, “there is something incoherent in massively importing French nuclear electricity and at the same time opposing any text and any legislation in the European Union which recognizes the added value of this form of carbon-free electricity,” she added. For months, Paris and Berlin have been divided on the role of nuclear power in the European electricity market, the outlines of the reform of which are being discussed by the 27.
France argues for the classification of the atom as a renewable energy, which Germany is opposed to. The minister said she found it “regrettable that Germany is procrastinating” in these negotiations. She also pointed to Berlin’s plans to build new gas-fired power stations to compensate for the intermittency of renewables.
“Gas is a fossil fuel”, which “poses a problem of credibility in the fight against climate change”, she added, calling on Berlin to find “carbon-free solutions to balance its own electricity needs”. Germany’s ruling coalition, led by Social Democrat Olaf Scholz, has set itself the target of 80% renewable electricity in its energy mix by 2030. This share rose to 48.3% in 2022.