Analysis: Nuclear vs. renewable in Germany

BERLIN, March 6 (UPI) -- Renewable and traditional energy companies have launched a war of words over Germany's future energy mix, a divisive issue increasing in prominence roughly half a year before Germans head to the polls to vote for a new government.

The dispute centers around one question: Will Germany stick to its decision to phase out nuclear energy or not?

The current government, made up of Chancellor Angela Merkel's conservatives and the center-left Social Democrats, is at odds over this.

If the Social Democrats become the big winners of the Sept. 27 election, then Germany's remaining 17 nuclear power stations, which in 2007 provided 21 percent of the nation's power, will be shut down by 2021. If Merkel's conservatives win, however, then the country will see a nuclear revival.

That is a scenario that has German renewable-energy companies worried. On the back of smart policies, government subsidies and constant innovation, the German renewable industry has raced to global leadership. It now aims to fundamentally change Germany's energy mix.

In 2020 renewables are to satisfy 47 percent of Germany's power mix -- more than triple the share of today, which stands at 15 percent.

To achieve that goal, nuclear power plants need to be shut down, the industry claims.

"Sticking to the phaseout is a key prerequisite for continuing development of our sector. It's our investment security," Bjoern Klusmann, the head of a German renewable industry association, said Wednesday in Berlin.

"We don't need nuclear," he said. "Renewables fulfill best the energy-political triptych of supply security, economic feasibility and environmental sustainability."

Yet six months before Germans head to the polls, the established energy giants, which only recently began to invest in renewables, are openly attacking the renewable-energy sector.

The head of German energy company RWE, Juergen Grossmann, said in an interview with a German business magazine that subsidies for renewables are a "support program for Russian gas," calling wind power an unstable provider requiring gas-fired power plants that would have to supply base-load capacities.

His company would continue to build nuclear power stations outside of Germany, for example in Britain, he added.

Klusmann contested the notion that Germany, which imports roughly a third of its gas from Russia, will have to buy even more.

"A greater renewable-energy portfolio means less gas, less nuclear and less coal," he said.

When it comes to installed capacity, Germany is the biggest wind-energy market in the world. But its total share stands at just more than 6 percent of the power mix.

Because wind strengths vary greatly, wind-power generation is highly fluctuating, and technology is still young that could harness and store electricity during peak wind and distribute during the lulls. This is not only putting strains on electricity grids. It also means that constantly producing units such as nuclear or gas-fired power plants have to provide base load.

Another option is that wind power from peak production times would be stored -- in batteries (think electric cars) or large water-based storage plants. In Denmark, for example, wind supplies 20 percent of the power -- a share deemed impossible by many experts only 20 years ago.

The Danes accomplished this in part by regional cooperation; when Denmark's wind output is high -- for example, at night -- it sends excess capacities to Norway, which can then close the valves in its hydro power plants and open them even more during the day to send power back to Denmark. Germany has similar arrangements with storage dams in Austria and Switzerland.

More storage plants are currently being built in the Alps to accommodate the growing share of wind energy, said Ralf Bischof, head of a German wind-energy industry group.

It remains to be seen how much additional wind power Germany will get, however.

The financial crisis has slowed down growth in the sector; several offshore wind parks had been planned for Germany's North and Baltic Sea coasts, but they have been delayed or even canceled.

"It's true; offshore currently has a financing problem," Bischof said. "But there won't be a supply problem, even if offshore doesn't come. We will be able to satisfy demand, no matter what."

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(snicola@upi.com)