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 Jochen Stay, born 1965, has been active in non-parliamentary movements since he turned 15. Since 1985 public protests stopped a nuclear fuel processing plant being built in Wackersdorf, Bavaria, he’s been an anti-nuclear activist. Since 2008 he’s been the spokesman for the anti-nuclear group, .ausgestrahlt.

Some praise Eon for apparently abandoning its nuclear and coal business and announcing it’s witching to renewable energies in future. But they overlook what’s really driving this splitting into two enterprises.

The outsourcing of nuclear and coal power production under a new name does not lead to Eon customers having less dirty energy delivered to their homes in future. The then make-believe-green company will continue to buy from the new sister company. It’s just not as obvious – and hence less bad for the image.

In future the Eon logo will no longer be on the coal and nuclear power stations, even though Eon will remain the biggest buyer of the power they produce. It’s a way of keeping customers who don’t want to trade with firms directly co-responsible for nuclear waste and the climate catastrophe. This kind of thing is normally called label fraud or greenwashing.

And so it’ll be harder in future to persuade Eon customers to change to other suppliers, seeing that their present one, after all, has become totally green.

When the company publishes numbers that put the self-produced green power in the foreground but hide the bought-in dirty power, a completely false impression will be created in consumers. And the negative headlines about mishaps in power stations, legal action against stopping nuclear power and nuclear waste scandals will then be pasted on the new no-name company, which will be owned by the same shareholders as ever.

The outsourced dirty power department can then act totally without scruples because it no longer has to worry about its reputation – after all, it doesn’t supply any consumers directly.

Eon chief Johannes Teyssen is already wooing investors to the new entity with prospects of billions in compensation legal action is attempting to pry from the government because it ordered closure of a few old nuclear power stations in 2011.

There’s another dangerous background to the splitting of the Düsseldorf based energy giant: in future Eon can no longer be made liable for the costs that will accrue for the dismantling of power stations and the storage of nuclear waste. The reserves set aside for these activities, which fall far short of what will be needed, will pass together with the stations to the new enterprise.

Since these reserves aren’t kept in a bank safe or a fixed term account somewhere, but are invested in coal stations, for example, that are becoming ever less profitable because of the energy turnaround, even many of these very inadequate funds are in danger of being lost.

Sooner or later the new corporation will fall bankrupt and the state will have to shoulder the burden, while Eon, freed of old burdens, can happily continue raking in profits by passing coal and nuclear power to unsuspecting consumers.

This is how this Eon outsourcing under a new name will quasi become a “bad company” – analogous to a “bad bank” in the finance crisis: everything that isn’t profitable in the long term is shoved off into state responsibility.

The fact that the federal economics minister, Sigmar Gabriel, welcomes the Eon split in this situation and claims that the reserves are both secure and adequate is scandalous.

Instead, the federal government must block Eon’s plans and ensure that those who for decades made billions from nuclear and coal power have to pay for the consequences.