Germany’s lower house of parliament on Thursday overwhelmingly approved an exit from nuclear energy by 2022, setting the seal on a policy U-turn by Chancellor Angela Merkel driven by Japan’s Fukushima disaster.
Opposition deputies from the center-left Social Democrats (SPD) and Green Party joined lawmakers in Merkel’s center-right coalition in supporting the key measure in an energy reform bill in its third and final reading.
Calling it Merkel’s “Waterloo,” the SPD and Greens said ahead of the vote the nuclear phase-out vindicated three decades of bitter opposition to nuclear power in Germany.
However, German industry and the country’s neighbors fear Merkel’s change of heart on nuclear plants — late last year she called them safe and advocated keeping them open longer — could imperil the power supply in Europe’s biggest economy.
The upper house (Bundesrat) debate on the package on July 8 will be a formality as the chamber representing Germany’s states could only block the package with a two-thirds majority — not likely in a house where Merkel is only marginally outnumbered.
The government, struggling to hit tough mid-term targets for reducing greenhouse gases, faces accusations from the renewable energy lobby that it has missed a chance to promote growth of wind and solar power more aggressively.
European Energy Commissioner Guenther Oettinger, speaking to a conference in Berlin as the Bundestag (lower house) debated the package of power laws nearby, said Germany’s neighbors were worried about its program of nuclear shutdowns by 2022.
He said closing the oldest eight of Germany’s 17 nuclear plants after an earthquake and tsunami crippled Japan’s Fukushima Dai-ichi plant in March had already reduced the total European power supply by 2 to 3 percent, “which was manageable; the headlines were bigger than the cut.”
However, “Europe must do what it can so the process of creeping de-industrialization does not proceed,” he added.
He urged Berlin to coordinate the nuclear exit with its EU partners to ensure stable power supplies and stop costs from rising.
Merkel, a conservative with one eye on her coalition’s declining popularity and growing support for the Greens, has dismissed such worries, telling pro-nuclear neighbor France that Germany can get its power via renewable technology.
“This is more than consensus for a nuclear exit, this is consensus for a switch to renewable energy,” she told the Bundestag earlier.
“We want to remain an industrial nation and sustain growth, but we want to organize that growth so that we guarantee quality of life for coming generations as well,” she said, adding that solar, wind and biofuel technology would provide the key.
Lawmakers also voted to maintain Germany’s current system of subsidies unchanged for the solar and onshore wind industries and offer improved incentives for wind power generated offshore.
Germany, which gets close a fifth of its energy from renewable sources, aims to raise that figure to 35 percent by 2020, but industry representatives joined the SPD and Greens in arguing the reforms for that sector did not go far enough.
“The new energy bill is inadequate,” renewable energy association president Dietmar Schuetz said. “The government, despite its early move to exit nuclear energy, has failed to formulate ambitious goals for faster energy reforms.”
Energy association BDEW estimated that 8 gigawatts to 17 gigawatts of new capacity — mostly greenhouse gas-generating gas and coal-based — will have to be built over the next decade to counter the volatility of green power and to make up for lost nuclear capacity.
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