On 30 March 2011, the then chancellor Angela Merkel announced that Germany would shut down all of its nuclear power plants by 2022. As a result, energy generated by nuclear energy fell from 25 per cent of the country’s energy mix, to 11.3 per cent in 2021, and then to zero in 2023.
Merkel pledged to fill the gap with renewables. It didn’t happen. In 2021, coal provided 27 per cent of Germany’s electricity. This failure had major implications for Germany’s climate goals and it had a serious impact on Germany’s energy security, too.
As a result of its rush to shut down its nuclear plants, Germany had to burn more natural gas – by 2021, more than 40 per cent was imported from Russia. Plans to increase this were thwarted when the Nord Stream 2 pipeline suffered serious damage from by a suspected Russian attack in 2022.
Consequently, Germany reopened some coal-fired power stations and expanded its liquefied natural gas (LNG) import capacity. All this was at huge cost to German taxpayers, damaging the country’s net zero goals and exposing it to the volatility of international energy markets.
Germany suffered as a result of poor decisions made on the basis of ideology not reality.
In her defence, Merkel made her decision at a time when it was unthinkable that the international situation would deteriorate to the level that it has in recent years. The Energy Secretary Ed Miliband and the UK government have no such excuse.
The government knows how easily Russia weaponised energy in its war on Ukraine, and knows the financial and environmental cost of importing LNG on diesel-chugging ships from the other side of the Atlantic. Imported LNG now accounts for 60 per cent of gas used in the UK, with emissions four times larger than if we were to maximise gas extracted from British waters.
In extending and increasing the Energy Profits Levy, removing most investment allowances and refusing to issue new oil and gas licences in the North Sea, this government has created a negative atmosphere around the UK continental shelf that risks investment drying up, work stalling and workers leaving.
Promises reminiscent of those made in Germany, such as that renewables will fill the gap while delivering the high-skilled jobs to replace those being lost are proving difficult to achieve. And there is scant evidence that the cost of building this new system will prove cheaper.
And while Miliband claims his “Clean Power Mission” will make us less reliant on petro-states and dictatorships (I presume he means Norway), it will make us more dependent on China – a country that consistently tries to undermine the UK and the West due to its dominance in processing the critical minerals required in many new technologies, as well as the sheer might of its manufacturing base used to build the number of solar panels, wind turbines, battery storage facilities and pylons required by these mad-cap plans.
This country desperately needs a plan for energy that prioritises our security and the cost to business and the consumer. One that reverts to our policy, to maximise economic recovery of oil and gas from the North Sea, and to allow a domestic manufacturing and skills base to expand in order to build the new technologies required for transition.
We need a plan for critical minerals that makes us less reliant on China. And we need to build new nuclear – and lots of it – to meet our goal of 24 gigawatts on the grid by 2050. That would represent a quarter of the UK’s overall energy demand met by clean, secure British power.
That’s the plan I’m developing for Kemi Badenoch and the Conservatives. I only hope by the time we get into power again, it isn’t too late.
This article first appeared in our Spotlight Energy and Climate Change supplement of 24 April 2025.
Content from our partners
Related
