Nukes not necessary

We don't need nuclear power to reverse climate change - just ask Germany, says Godfrey Boyle

In Britain, an increasingly vociferous minority has been arguing recently that we must reopen the nuclear energy option. Renewable energy sources and energy efficiency, they say, cannot make a big enough contribution to achieving the 60 per cent cut in fossil-fuel carbon emissions that will be needed by mid-century to avert catastrophic climate change.

Yet Germany - a larger and wealthier nation than Britain that consumes more electricity and has more nuclear power stations but has poorer fossil and renewable energy resources - is on course to phase out nuclear energy by 2020. It is introducing renewable energy many times faster than the UK, and it has detailed plans to cut emissions by not just 60 per cent but 80 per cent by 2050.

Last month, the Royal Society called on the Government to address the difficult issue of how Britain can achieve an affordable energy supply while cutting carbon emissions. Next week, a meeting of the Parliamentary and Scientific Select Committee, chaired by Lord Broers, will debate the nuclear option. As I will tell that meeting, there are lessons we can learn from Germany.

The UK's renewable energy sources contributed only 1.3 per cent of the country's primary energy (including coal, oil and gas, as well as electricity) and 3.5 per cent of its electricity in 2003-04. By contrast, renewables in Germany contributed 3 per cent of primary energy and 7.9 per cent of electricity in 2003 - more than twice as much as in the UK.

Premium prices are paid for renewable power in Germany, but the additional costs are added to electricity bills, not paid by taxpayers. The costs are modest: e1 per month per household.

Not surprisingly, the renewable energy sector in Germany is booming. In 2003, it had a turnover of €10 billion (£6.76 billion) and employed 120,000 people. Long-term investment is predicted to reach €18 billion to E20 billion a year, and by 2020 the sector is expected to be employing 400,000 people.

Alongside measures to promote renewables, Germany has also been encouraging more efficient use of energy through incentives for combined heat and power generation and increasingly stringent regulations on the energy performance of buildings.

So how do Germany's and Britain's plans for the rest of this decade and beyond compare?

The UK Government plans to increase the renewable electricity contribution to 10 per cent by 2010 and to 15 per cent by 2015 as part of its Kyoto Protocol commitment to cut greenhouse gas emissions. By the end of 2004, the Kyoto target of a 12.5 per cent cut by 2012 had been reached, though there are concerns that emissions may rise again.

Germany's renewable electricity targets are similar: 12.5 per cent by 2010 and 20 per cent by 2020. But it also aims by 2010 to achieve a 10 per cent contribution of renewables to primary energy. Germany's Kyoto target is for a 21 per cent cut in greenhouse gas emissions: by 2004, it had reached 19 per cent.

Germany's massive expansion of wind power has aroused much less controversy than in Britain. And a recent study by the German Energy Agency showed that, contrary to reports in an often-alarmist press, it is entirely feasible for the country to integrate into its electricity grid the 37,000MW of wind power, generated offshore as well as onshore, that will be needed to supply some 20 per cent of electricity by 2015-20.

Germany has ambitious plans for the rest of this century. By 2050, it envisages primary energy use falling to about half of current levels despite continuing economic growth and rising prosperity, as a result of major improvements in energy efficiency and increasing use of combined heat and power. By then, renewables should be supplying 65 per cent of Germany's electricity, 45 per cent of its heat and 30 per cent of its transport fuel.

Nuclear power will have been phased out for three decades by 2020, and fossil fuel use will have been cut to about 20 per cent of today's levels.

This "ecologically optimised" energy system will allow Germany to achieve an 80 per cent cut in greenhouse gas emissions, setting an example to other wealthy nations.

Germany is the living refutation of the argument that we need nuclear power to combat climate change because renewables and energy efficiency cannot deliver the necessary cuts in fossil-fuel emissions. Other industrialised countries such as Britain would do well to follow Germany's lead.

Godfrey Boyle is director of the Open University Energy and Environment Research Unit. An extended version of this article will appear in the July-August issue of Resurgence magazine. www.resurgence.org