German power executives want more nuclear power but official government position is unchanged

According to a March 24, 2008 article in the Guardian titled We need more nuclear plants to avoid blackouts, say German power chiefs, German power industry executives are working to encourage discussion of the current agreement to phase out nuclear power. They point out future supply challenges and state that shutting down their already operating plants will make it even more difficult to supply their customers power needs and to meet the CO2 emission control obligations imposed by the Kyoto Treaty.

Bernotat, head of Germany’s biggest power group, warned that prices were bound to rise if demand outstripped supply and said the easiest way to overcome the gap was to prolong the life of Germany’s existing 17 nuclear power plants.

Under an agreement between the ruling grand coalition partners, Germany will close all of its plants by 2021 and build no new ones.

In contrast to the views expressed by the utility industry, the German Energy Agency (Dena) chief Stephan Kohler recently indicated that the supply challenges that the industry sees ahead would not be a problem if politicians and economic leaders would simply get behind the proposals to build about 25 new coal fired power stations. According to an article published by Deutsche Welle on March 24, 2008, Mr. Kohler claimed that those new power stations somehow emit about 1/3 less CO2 than the plants that they would replace.

“More and more plans to build power plants have been put on hold,” Dena chief Stephan Kohler told the Braunschweiger Zeitung on Thursday, March 20.

Germany has pledged to phase out nuclear power plants by 2020, which Kohler said his organization is not opposed to. Plans to build up to 25 coal plants have met with resistance, mainly from environmental groups.

Kohler appealed to both Germany’s politicians and economic leaders to allow the building of new power plants, which he said emit around one third less carbon dioxide than the old plants.

Perhaps he went to the Amory Lovins school of energy decisions where assumption number one is that anything is better than nuclear fission power.