German politicians still clash over power-supply future: reports
Leading German politicians continue to fight over the future of the country's power supply, according to various press reports Monday.
The head of the conservative CDU party, Chancellor Angela Merkel, told Sunday newspaper Frankfurter Allgemeinen Sonntagszeitung that the lives of nuclear units should be extended and new coal units should be built to secure power supply in Germany.
However, Merkel has repeatedly said she would stick to the decommissioning agreement of the previous social democrat (SPD) and Green Party government, which is also part of the current coalition agreement between CDU/SPD.
Germany's previous government passed a nuclear phase-out law in 2002, forbidding the construction of new nuclear plants and limiting existing ones to an average life-span of 32 years, based on remaining allocated capacity.
The majority of conservative party seniors, such as economy minister Michael Glos, are in favor of extending nuclear life spans and Glos has said he intends to address this issue during the election campaign for the 2009 scheduled general elections.
The generation of energy, a sector that is a shared responsibility between the economics and environment ministries, remains a major point of disagreement between the responsible ministers.
Economy minister Glos over the weekend accused the SPD's environment minister Sigmar Gabriel of looking at energy supply through "ideological goggles." Glos warned of a supply shortage by 2012 and rejected a thesis paper from the environment ministry which stated that supply in Germany was secure.
Glos told weekly business magazine Wirtschaftswoche that "one could rather trust a hungry dog [guarding] sausage stocks" than trust the environment ministry with watching over the safety of power supply.
It was therefore good, said Glos, that the security of energy supply is under the responsibility of the economy ministry.
Gabriel, meanwhile, said lobbying against new coal units was putting secure supply in danger and that blocking new coal units may actually support longer lives for nuclear units.
A ministerial study, as published in weekly news magazine Der Spiegel, according to Gabriel, showed that Germany could build as many as 10 more coal units without endangering its climate targets.
Foreign minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier (SPD) also warned of supply shortage as a consequence of the lack of investment in energy infrastructure.
"New pipelines have to be built, new transmission lines have to be constructed and efficient coal units have to be connected," he told Der Spiegel.
All that had to happen now, "if we want to avoid the return to nuclear power and meet our climate targets," said Steinmeier.
Industry lobby group BDI wants the government to more firmly support the construction of new coal-fired power plants and extend the lives of nuclear units.
"Energy supply is in immediate danger without nuclear units and new environmentally sound coal units," said Werner Schnappauf, chairman of the lobby group, to business daily Handelsblatt.
The BDI wants the government to present a coherent energy concept as well as a campaign in support of new power plants and a modern electricity network.
Otherwise, rising energy prices would not only increase the power bills for families and businesses but also "endanger Germany as a location for industry and with that hundreds of thousands of jobs," the group argued.
Juergen Grossmann, chairman of German utility major RWE, meanwhile said forgoing coal today would create supply shortages tomorrow.
Grossmann told Handelsblatt that the world was "banking on coal," at least in 70% of the units presently under construction.
He asked the public and politicians to give up their opposition to coal units, because efficient ones would strengthen competition as well as environmental positions.