nuclear-news

Germany reaffirms its opposition to nuclear power being designated as ”sustainable”

Germany will work towards an exclusion of nuclear power from the EU taxonomy for sustainable investments, the country’s environment minister Svenja Schulze has affirmed. “We don’t want nuclear energy, we don’t think it’s sustainable and we don’t want the EU to support it,“ the acting minister from the Social Democrats (SPD) told newspapers of the Funke Mediengruppe in an article carried by the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung.

Schulze added that the German government is not alone on this position, countering an initiative of several other EU member states under the leadership of France to give nuclear power a greater role in the EU’s plans for decarbonisation and the greening of the financial system.

Building nuclear plants would be much too expensive and time-consuming for effective climate action, with plants commissioned now only being ready for operation by 2045 due to lengthy searches for a location, licensing hurdles and expectable protests against it, she argued. Conservative (CSU) Bavarian state premier Markus Söder backed Schulze’s rejection to make the
technology a tool for climate action, arguing that Germany’s nuclear phase-out “is based on broad societal acceptance.”

 Clean Energy Wire 8th Nov 2021

https://www.cleanenergywire.org/news/german-politicians-affirm-rejection-nuclear-power-eu-sustainable-finance-taxonomy

November 11, 2021 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | climate change, Germany