They should take control. That's why it puzzled me why they are okay to get deindustrialized, are okay to destroy their nuclear plants, and are okay to rely on imports of natural gas from Russia
(1) Yes, there is the challenge of dark days with little wind, but there are many, many avenues to solve this one (better grid interconnections across Europe, green hydrogen backup plants, overbuilding cheap capacity, …)
What hindsight? Everyone knew at the time that it was premature. It was a deliberate choice to bear the burden of increased pollution and to make the country more dependent on the whims of a foreign dictator, because nuclear bad.
The phase out of nuclear had already started. Merkel reversed that, than in the wake of Fukushima reversed that once again, paying the nuclear companies hundreds of millions of damages in the process.
The Nord Stream pipeline was completed in 2011, the same year Merkel decided to accelerate the phase out of nuclear. The US had repeatedly warned against constructing the pipeline because of energy dependence on Russia.
Everyone knew that apart from coal Germany has no energy resources. Given that it wouldn't be possible to meet climate goals with coal the energy would need to come from either the newly constructed pipeline or renewables.
That the newly created energy dependence would give power to dictatorships may not have been at the forefront of the public's mind. But treating it as something unknowable without hindsight lets the politicians who caused this travesty off too easy. If Merkel had been honest to the public about the potential consequences of her decision, perhaps it would've been a part of the debate.
You do realize that Germany is not allowed to do any uranium enrichment or waste processing? All of this was outsourced, partially to France, but primarily to Russia.
How is that not "dependent on the whims of a foreign dictator"
Started? The anti-nuclear movement has been around since the 70s.
That's technically true, but France's representation is completely outsized in that, as the one country which went hard on nuclear it's got more than half the nuclear production of the continent: https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php...
And that's being down 25% from its historical peaks because a significant fraction of the park was offline for unscheduled maintenance due to corrosion issues (I believe the park's been ramping back up and should be back to full).
IIRC France is the number 3 nuclear electricity producer on the planet behind the US and China.
Add on top the insane costs of building, maintaining, and waste disposal, nuclear power plants are, without subventions, just not economically viable. But keep on researching, there is interesting stuff happening in this space, and -- who knows -- maybe something moves the equation around.
All those options are currently non-viable because they are too expensive.
The problem is that the few dark days with little wind cost as much to produce as all remaining days of the year (and may even surpass it). Interconnections added to the problem, with worse long term allocation of hydro storage and increased volatile in the energy market. Market forces has been a direct hindrance, with citizens in practically every EU country demanding government subsidizes to solve the issue of energy shortage, rather then reducing demand.
Looking at a typical energy bill from northern Europe, you almost don't pay anything for hours when wind production is optimal. The cost of those hours are basically a rounding error and all you pay are grid fees. The issue is the average price are more than 20x of that, and the peak price are well over 100x.
This is a widespread talking point that is more wrong than correct:
Germany did not shut down its nuclear reactors early. In fact, those reactors should have been shut down decades ago. They had been well past their intended shelf lives.
The decision to finally shut them down also dates back to Merkel during the Fukushima incident (2011). So the timeline to shutting them down wasn't exactly short either. The last nuclear reactors were shut down well more than ten years after the original decision was made.
What you can blame Germany for is not building new nuclear reactors. Germany hadn't built new nuclear reactors since Chernobyl - the last reactor to come online was in 1988. The influence of the anti-nuclear protests was strong enough to prevent the construction of new reactors but not enough to phase out the ones that existed. Instead Germany continued extending their runtimes over and over again because this was easier to justify politically (or rather because it was less obvious than building new ones).
So in other words: it took Germany from 1986 (Chernobyl) to 2023 to shut down its reactors. But it did so in an extremely irresponsible way. And it still didn't have proper plans in place like investing in grid infrastructure and storage necessary to expand renewables.
That said, nuclear power is overrated as the one thing it does well is constant stable energy production. But the problem in the modern grid is not not having enough energy, the problem is not having enough energy on demand. Renewables can provide enough energy but they are unstable. You need something to cover those dips and nuclear doesn't work for that because you can't really scale it up and down much. Storage would be ideal but for the majority of time since the reunion Germany has been under a conservative government which doesn't want to spend money on infrastructure maintenance let alone investments (let's see if this conservative government will do things differently as Black Rock Merz has been promising in between his anti-woke populism). But for the time being the only option Germany has is fossil.
Power in Germany is expensive mostly due to gas and lack of storage capacity. Check back in four years when the storage capacity has gone up tenfold.
And storage is typically something thay doesn't scale, which is why Germany needs coal or gas to complement renewables. Polluting the rest of Europe while doing so.
Even the term of "renewables" is untrue, given the relatively short lifespan of most windfarms and solar panels. After 25 years you have to trash them, with no real way to recycle it.
Grid infrastructure requirements alone likely negates any ecological benefits given the amount of copper needed and the abysmal ecological conditions of copper mining.
If Germany were to split its electrical grid into two (north and south), as economists and the EU demand, things would be clearer.
The northern grid would produce more renewable energy than is required in total (hovering between 120-300% production vs usage). It'd have electricity prices around 10-15ct/kWh
The southern grid would have more pollution than even poland, as it's primarily fed with lignite, and would end up with an electricity price above 90ct/kWh.
The issues in Germany are not caused by technical or economical challenges, but by political ones. The southern states have passed laws to restrict renewables and limit construction of new power lines to gain favors with conservative NIMBYs and newage NIMBYs.
The idea might well have come from the Schroeder Government but he did not make the final decision. In fact, the idea of nuclear exit is an idea of the Greens, Schroeder was pandering to the Greens in his coalition government back in the day. (Schroeder being SPD ("socialist"), Merkel being CDU ("conservative") and the Greens being the king makers back in the day - 2002 elections).
One has to remember that it was different times: the Greens were a serious alternative to SPD and CDU, one of their main ideals (since their foundation) has been an exit from nuclear (generally). So once they came into power with the SPD and Schroeder, they were naturally keen on asserting their influence.
Schroeder needed an alternative power source so he started looking to Russia. Russia was a serious partner in Europe, not only for Germany but all of Europe. After the fall of the wall, the policy of Europe was Russian integration into Europe. Why? Because this policy of interdependence of nations within Europe brought peace to Europe. Interdependence is - within capitalism - best achieved via trade amongst nations. Hence Germanys (not only Schroeder but german industry too) decision to accept (more) cheap gas and oil from Russia. The Russians were keen to bypass Ukraine and deliver gas directly to Germany, hence the idea of building the Nordstream 2 pipeline - an idea supported by the Schroeder Government and most probably german industry.
The Nordstream 2 pipeline was completed in Merkels times but it was never brought online. Olaf Scholz (SPD) made the final decision not to take the pipeline online because of Russias official recognition of the Donetsk and Luhansk regions as Russian. It was bombed - destroyed? - by unknown persons during the current war in 2022.
The result of these events has been raising energy costs in Germany. Which has lead to disenchantment in the political system, which in turn has lead to a shift to the right in Germany and a raise in the AFD. Ironically, it has now come full circle with a CDU suggesting an easing (if not removal) of the "Schuldenbremse"[1] ("brake on debt") - meaning that Germany is not allowed to borrow money above a certain limit. A policy that has destroyed investment in the country and lead to an evasion to risk-taking. A policy introduced by the CDU back in 2009.
In the end, it is all rather academic since we're now here and pointing fingers at the past is pointless. We're now facing a populist president in the USA, a populist Kanzler (prime minister) in German and chaos in Europe and the World.
For me, it seems that good ideas are always the success of those that commit to those ideas, never those that actually had the ideas. Bad ideas, on the other hand, are always the fault of those that had the ideas, never those that committed to those ideas. Unfortunately hindsight decides between good and bad ideas.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_balanced_budget_amendme...