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The German Green (Grüne) party is up in recent polls[0]. They are not just part of the German government coalition, with the posts of Secretary of Economy and E

The German Green (Grüne) party is up in recent polls[0]. They are not just part of the German government coalition, with the posts of Secretary of Economy and Energy (Habeck) and Foreign Secretary (aka Secretary of State, Baerbock) (and some other posts), they are very powerful within the government coalition. Both Habeck and Baerbock are leading Chancellor Scholz of the SPD in polls since months. It has to be said tho that the Green party is doing "realpolitik" now. While they aim at one hand to drastically accelerate renewables, right now they also invest heavily in getting a more secure energy situation in the near future still using a lot of fossil fuels, including rapidly building up LNG terminals and securing deals with parties they previously frowned upon, e.g. a gas deal with Qatar, the government of which the Green party previously heavily criticized for the human rights situation in the country. And e.g. they accepted - with some bickering - the temporary gas (as in petrol) price subventions the other coalition parties wanted, in exchange for temporary public transport price subventions (a 9-Euro regional ticket, that is valid for a month at a time, 21M sold by July 1, population 83M). They are still rejecting nuclear power generation, neither wanting to build new plants, nor keeping old plants running (the operators of said old plants already called the idea of keeping those plants running "infeasible" to outright "stupid"). It remains to be seen what the blowback will be if inflation doesn't at least slow down, or if autumn and winter come and people start getting cold. Tho right now, the politicians and leading experts and "experts" say, it doesn't look like there there will be a shortage on a scale that gets life-threatening to some people. [0] 20-24% share in recent polls, vs the 14.8% they actually got in the last election in Sep 2021. They are actually slightly ahead of the SPD (social democrats) in the polls now. The SPD is the majority partner in the coalition. https://www.wahlrecht.de/umfragen/ https://www.wahlrecht.de/umfragen/

mr_toad 4y ago
> They are still rejecting nuclear power generation It boggles the mind that a so called Green Party is investing in fossil fuels.
- hef19898 4y ago
  Not really. Short term the German nuclear plants cannot be kept operational any longer. While fossils are bad, they are less bad than having none and getting old buclear planta ready when they are not needed anymore. Also, the fossil plants are there, and this cheaper to ramp up. Mid term, the goal seems to be renewables. All in all, quite reasonable and well thought through under the current circumstances.
- rndgermandude 4y ago
  Effectively the only option they got. Nuclear is gone thanks to the Green party but also Merkel's CDU - who reversed the nuclear exit at first, thereby fucking up planning and investments into renewables, and then reversed that reversal after Fukushima. The current government that has the Greens as a major coalition partner isn't really investing in new fossil fuel stuff, but replacements of existing fossil fuel stuff. E.g. the LNG terminals are meant to replace the capacity lost from ceased imports from Russia. Building nuclear now isn't really an option anyway, at least not to deal with the current situation. The operators of nuclear plants already signaled that running their plants longer is not an option. That would require a lot of investment, and more importantly a lot of time to renovate, modernize and re-certify these things. An effort I believe they said was in the range of 3 or more years. Building entirely new plants, even with existing designs, would require at least 4 years even on a very expedited schedule. So in the short term the only option is to keep using fossils - sourced from some place not-Russia. The Greens, while they certainly do not like that, understood this. Would we Germans be better off if we had some nuclear plants left? Sure. But we'd also be better off if we instead had that energy mix that the Greens envisioned at the start of the century, that entailed renewables at the core, a bit of carbon (mostly from renewable sources, with tech to make it more or less carbon-neutral in totality) and storage, and investments (driven by government incentives) to use less energy in the first place. If I had to blame anybody, it would be the 16 years of Merkel governments which managed to fuck up both nuclear and renewables, not the Green party.

mr_toad 4y ago

> They are still rejecting nuclear power generation It boggles the mind that a so called Green Party is investing in fossil fuels.

hef19898 4y ago
Not really. Short term the German nuclear plants cannot be kept operational any longer. While fossils are bad, they are less bad than having none and getting old buclear planta ready when they are not needed anymore. Also, the fossil plants are there, and this cheaper to ramp up. Mid term, the goal seems to be renewables. All in all, quite reasonable and well thought through under the current circumstances.
rndgermandude 4y ago
Effectively the only option they got. Nuclear is gone thanks to the Green party but also Merkel's CDU - who reversed the nuclear exit at first, thereby fucking up planning and investments into renewables, and then reversed that reversal after Fukushima. The current government that has the Greens as a major coalition partner isn't really investing in new fossil fuel stuff, but replacements of existing fossil fuel stuff. E.g. the LNG terminals are meant to replace the capacity lost from ceased imports from Russia. Building nuclear now isn't really an option anyway, at least not to deal with the current situation. The operators of nuclear plants already signaled that running their plants longer is not an option. That would require a lot of investment, and more importantly a lot of time to renovate, modernize and re-certify these things. An effort I believe they said was in the range of 3 or more years. Building entirely new plants, even with existing designs, would require at least 4 years even on a very expedited schedule. So in the short term the only option is to keep using fossils - sourced from some place not-Russia. The Greens, while they certainly do not like that, understood this. Would we Germans be better off if we had some nuclear plants left? Sure. But we'd also be better off if we instead had that energy mix that the Greens envisioned at the start of the century, that entailed renewables at the core, a bit of carbon (mostly from renewable sources, with tech to make it more or less carbon-neutral in totality) and storage, and investments (driven by government incentives) to use less energy in the first place. If I had to blame anybody, it would be the 16 years of Merkel governments which managed to fuck up both nuclear and renewables, not the Green party.