The German Government has passed a bill that gives the country the legal right to proceed with its phase-out of nuclear power but will open the door to companies like Vattenfall and RWE to receive compensation for their investment into nuclear power plants.
Following the 2011 Fukushima nuclear disaster in Japan, Germany made the unprecedented decision to close down all its nuclear power plants — the oldest eight power plants were closed immediately, while the remaining nine are scheduled to be turned off by 2022.
“A decision has been taken to shut down eight plants before the end of this year and they definitely won’t be reactivated. And the remaining nine will be shut down by the end of the decade,” Juergen Becker, deputy environment minister at the time, told Reuters. “Japan has shown that even if there is a minuscule occurrence, the residual risk is too high to justify the continuation of nuclear power (…) It is better to go for other energy services in a civilized country.”
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The news comes as no real surprise, but it will be interesting to see how this impacts future decisions to be made by companies like RWE, specifically as it concerns similar actions taken by governments to U-turn on various technologies. RWE recently was faced with news that the Netherlands was going to ban the use of coal by 2030, and that it was closing two coal-fired power plants by 2024 — one of which belongs to RWE.
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When reached for comment, RWE explained that they “are happy that this issue is now being addressed. We expect that we will receive compensation for our stranded investments and that our electricity quota for Mülheim-Kärlich can either be sold to a competitor or reimbursed by the government. After deducting the volumes we wish to transfer to the Emsland and Gundremmingen plants, which we will own in full following the transaction with E.ON, this quota still amounts to 27 terawatt hours. We anticipate that we may receive up to a medium triple-digit million euro sum based on these regulations in the years ahead.”
Read more at Germany To Compensate RWE & Vattenfall Over Nuclear Phase-Out
