Former US Secretary of Energy:

“German Greens spread misinformation”

The former Secretary of Energy under US President Barack Obama accuses Annalena Baerbock's German Green Party of "spreading misinformation".

(Bild: APA/AFP/THOMAS KIENZLE)

In April last year, Germany shut down the last remaining active nuclear power plants. In the fight against climate change and in the search for green alternatives to fossil fuels, the government in Berlin - contrary to a growing trend in Europe - did not rely on nuclear power. This has been criticized in the USA. Former Secretary of Energy Steven Chu even accuses the governing Green Party of "spreading misinformation".

In an interview with the "Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung", Chu advises the Germans to urgently rethink their energy policy. This is because there is a threat of large parts of heavy industry moving away. This is because it is dependent on a stable and affordable power supply - around the clock. "So if individual people say they don't want this, they don't want that, they don't want nuclear power, they don't want coal, they can do everything with renewable energies, then these people are obviously not running semiconductor factories, chemical factories or manufacturing plants," said the 75-year-old Nobel Prize winner.

Archive image from 2009: Energy Secretary Steven Chu and President Barack Obama

(Bild: AFP)

If you want to achieve the climate targets, but at the same time preserve jobs and remain globally competitive, nuclear power "doesn't look so bad", emphasizes the former minister. In his opinion, nuclear reactors would be preferable to gas-fired power plants, which are envisaged in Germany's recently adopted power plant strategy. These are intended to compensate for the fluctuations in electricity feed-in from wind and solar power plants, but are also to be gradually converted to the more climate-friendly hydrogen.

In this context, however, Chu speaks of "misinformation" that the Greens are spreading. The party's position is "not compatible with our future reality".

The "true" cost of nuclear power
However, environmental protection organizations repeatedly emphasize that the theory spread by the nuclear lobby that nuclear power is so cheap is not entirely true. For example, the German Federation for the Environment and Nature Conservation explains on its website that high investments are necessary for the construction of nuclear power plants, which can only be afforded by large companies. This leads to "inadequate competition" and possible price fixing. In addition, there are massive state subsidies.

It should also be borne in mind that the electricity price "does not reflect the true costs of nuclear power". In this context, reference is made to a study by the Forum Ökologisch-Soziale Marktwirtschaft on the real costs of various forms of energy for society as a whole. Taking into account all factors for people and the environment, a kilowatt hour (kWh) of nuclear power costs up to 42.2 cents. Wind energy, on the other hand, only costs around 8.1 cents/kWh, according to the study.