Without nuclear, where will Germany get its power?
JEREMY HOBSON: News this morning that Germany plans to abandon nuclear energy altogether in the next 11 years. The move would make Germany the biggest industrial country to give up nuclear energy following Japan’s nuclear disaster.
As for where Germany will get its energy from going forward? Here’s the BBC’s Rebecca Singer with that part of the story.
REBECCA SINGER: Doing without nuclear power in a decade is an ambitious timeline.
Friedbert Pfluger is director of the European Centre for Energy and Resource Security. He says Germany has already made great progress in increasing its reliance on renewable technologies.
FRIEDBERT PFUGER: And with new storage facilities, with the combination of wind, bio gas, water and solar we have a lot of possibilities in the future to reach that goal.
The long term aim is for Germany to rely almost completely on renewables. That won’t be possible within the next decade. But in the meantime Germany will instead rely on natural gas to bridge the gap. That could face opposition from environmentalists, who aren’t keen on an increasingly widely used technique, which involves getting natural gas from shale.
There are concerns that Germans will have to pay more for energy, but Pfluger says it makes great business sense because Germany could become the world leader in developing new renewable technology.
I’m the BBC’s Rebecca Singer for Marketplace.
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