German lawmakers announced on Monday that they are going to burn coal and keep two nuclear power plants available as a last resort to get through the winter.
“The major crises — war and climate crises — have a very concrete effect,” said Robert Habeck, the federal economics and climate protection minister, in written statements published on Monday. (The statement is issued in German and CNBC used Google to translate it to English.) [bold, links added]
The German government announced its plans to keep the Isar 2 and Neckarwestheim nuclear power plants, both of which are located in the southern part of the country, on a kind of backup status, available only if the country has no other option, as it announced the results of its second network stress test, in which German officials are calculating its energy needs based on a number of potentialities.
This second network stress test was focused on the winter season from 2022 to 2023, which is when energy demand is higher as people and businesses need to heat their homes.
The Federal Ministry of Economics and Climate Protection said in its written statement that “hourly crisis situations in the electricity system” this winter are “very unlikely, but cannot be completely ruled out at the moment.”
The war in Ukraine has affected Germany’s ability to manage its energy supplies because Germany depends heavily on natural gas exports from Russia.
Gazprom, Russia’s major state-owned energy giant said on Friday that it would not re-open the Nord Stream 1 pipeline, which is the primary route of supplying Europe with natural gas, citing a need for maintenance work.
In addition to the squeeze on natural gas supplies, summer heatwaves, and ongoing drought have also disrupted energy sources.
“The summer drought has reduced the water levels in rivers and lakes, which weakens hydroelectric power in neighboring countries and also makes it difficult for us to transport coal to the power plants that we have to use due to the tight gas situation,” Habeck said.
Germany’s European neighbors are also struggling to meet their energy needs.
Roughly half of France’s nuclear power reactors have been taken offline as the country struggles to maintain the aging plants, the New York Times reports.
h/t RO
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When Donald Trump was president, he told Europe the stress test results of a scenario where Putin tries to leverage his near monopoly on their energy supply. He suggested that Europe find alternate sources of energy. They thought he was conning them into a more expensive option, American LNG. Fast forward to today. See, Trump is a savvy business man. The people who mocked him are politicians.