German Plan to Abandon Its Nuclear Energy Lags

By MELISSA EDDY - Published: May 30, 201 

BERLIN — More than a year after pledging to drop nuclear power, Chancellor Angela Merkel has acknowledged that her ambition for a Germany that runs on renewable energy is falling behind schedule and faces a range of obstacles, not least the revamping of the energy grid at a cost of billions of euros.

In recent weeks, Ms. Merkel has redoubled her efforts to push Germany’s troubled energy transformation, replacing her environment minister and declaring that she would make a new priority of the project, which foresees replacing nuclear power with renewable energy sources within a decade.

Since passing the legislation last year, in the aftermath of the tsunami and nuclear meltdown in Japan, Ms. Merkel’s own energies have been absorbed by the euro crisis and a series of regional elections. Last weekend she conceded that “we are behind on several projects.”

“Time is pressing, because we are completely transforming our energy supply,” Ms. Merkel said Saturday in her weekly podcast. “That means we need a completely different network than previously.”

Indeed, just producing the power is not enough, it requires the infrastructure to distribute it — much of it from new parks of wind turbines off the northern coast — to southern states, which are home to many of Germany’s leading industrial companies.

Ms. Merkel, her new environment minister, Peter Altmaier, and her economy minister, Philipp Rösler held talks Tuesday with the main network operators, who have estimated the cost of the planned expansion of the energy grid at €20 billion, or nearly $25 billion, over the course of the next decade.

On Wednesday, the main operators proposed a roadmap of how to get there. But with budget crises across Europe, money is not the only problem. To build the series of new power lines required, approval is needed from the authorities in each of the various states, and the operators say the paperwork is slowing them down.

Even before construction has begun in many places, farmers are demanding increased compensation for the land they will lose when power lines are strung across their fields. “We do not want to prevent the expansion of infrastructure,” said Michael Lohse, a spokesman for the German Farmers Federation. “But land is not limited.”

Germany drew some 20 percent of its total power from wind, water, solar and thermal energy sources in 2011. By 2030, the government hopes, Germany will more than double that to 50 percent. But on very windy days, the authorities in the north have had to switch some wind turbines off because the current network cannot cope with the high amount of power they produce.

Over the course of the next six weeks, the network operators will be reaching out to citizens over the Internet and through gatherings in communities, in an effort to ease the level of resistance to the new power masts.

Generally, however, Germans have shown a tolerance for the proliferating number of power lines and white wind turbines that now dot the countryside, allowing for wind energy to become the nation’s leading green power source. Wind turbines generated 37.5 billion kilowatt hours, or enough power for more than 11 million consumers, last year.

Their numbers are poised to grow as the new wind turbine projects off the northern coast expand, alongside the creation of the new north-south corridor of power lines needed to carry the electricity they generate to industrial areas.

The operators — 50Hertz, Amprion, TenneT and TransnetBW — said that Germany will need to upgrade about 4,400 kilometers, or 2,700 miles, of power lines and build an additional 3,800 kilometers of power lines by 2022 for Ms. Merkel’s plan to work.

In 2011, Germany was still a net exporter of electricity. If that is to remain the case, and if the chancellor’s plan is to be realized, industry experts say, it will take sustained effort. “The energy transformation is a generational project, it will not happen in one year or two, but over the very long term,” Ronny Meyer of the Wind Energy Agency said. “For that reason it must be a priority for the chancellor and the governors.” 

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