The former Federal Environment Minister Jürgen Trittin demands that, if necessary, a party conference of the Greens must decide on longer nuclear lifetimes and the controversial untying of the nuclear phase-out. “If you seriously want to change the Atomic Energy Act, it won’t work without a party congress,” Trittin told the Tagesspiegel. “Whether that has to be a special party conference or whether we could do it at the regular one in October is another question.”
The party left Trittin is clearly against any form of longer running times: “A stretching operation is also a running time extension. We have to change the Atomic Energy Act for this,” said Trittin, emphasizing: “We will not touch that.”
Otherwise, the FDP hopes to “negotiate everything possible together with the Union,” Trittin warned of a door opener for a fundamental reversal of the nuclear phase-out planned for the end of 2022.
When he now reads that the Greens should finally commit to nuclear energy, or that Robert Habeck would only be eligible for chancellorship if he says goodbye to the nuclear phase-out, he asks himself: “Well, where do we live then? So sometimes the summer slump gives birth to strange blossoms Stretch operation could run the plants with fuel elements that have not yet been burned out for a few months longer.
In addition, the demand for electricity could increase more than expected, also because many citizens have bought electric fan heaters for fear of cold gas heating.
The traffic light coalition partner FDP is in favor of a more comprehensive extension until at least spring 2024, Bavaria’s Prime Minister Markus Söder (CSU) warns of devastating consequences for Bavaria without an extension.
After the recent promises by Chancellor Olaf Scholz (SPD) that there should be more billions in aid for citizens due to the sharp rise in energy prices, Trittin expects the debt brake to be suspended in 2023. “This debt brake will not survive Christmas. That’s the way it is, everyone knows that,” the Greens member of the Bundestag told the Tagesspiegel. He justified this by saying that energy costs would increase by several thousand euros for the citizens.
Austerity economists would also support suspension. “In a situation like this, you have to specifically relieve those who are particularly affected, including the middle class,” emphasized Trittin to Finance Minister Christian Lindner (FDP), who has so far resisted a renewed suspension of the debt brake and the red pen want to start.
“To do nothing would also not be wise in a foreign policy sense. The fact that we are now seeing a move away from the sanctions policy in many countries, almost an aggressive rejection of the sanctions, has to do with the fact that people feel left alone with the consequences of this history,” emphasized Trittin. “And that’s why the Chancellor’s sentence is also correct: You’ll never walk alone”. But now it has to be backed up with content.”
Trittin criticized the fact that the FDP was fighting against an excess profit tax in order to strengthen the income side. Stadtwerke München is now speculating on almost half a billion profits from extending the service life of the Isar 2 nuclear power plant. “In Spain that would be taken away from them. The Spaniards get seven billion euros in revenue from their energy and oil companies via the excess profit tax. They then partly finance their gas price cap.”
Trittin emphasized that if one could not agree on this issue, then what had been agreed would remain – in return, this also applies to the nuclear phase-out at the end of the year. “We have agreed that we will not raise taxes. We have agreed that we will phase out nuclear energy. That is the agreed basis,” said Trittin.
In the nuclear debate, Trittin demanded that Bavaria’s Prime Minister Söder prefer to promote energy saving. “We have a regional problem, in Bavaria. And I say to the Bavarians: You can do a lot there, especially save electricity,” said Trittin. “The fact that the Bavarian Alps are snowed with snow cannons in winter has to be put to the test. In Bavaria, we have a gigantic electricity-saving potential that is far in excess of what Isar 2 could deliver.”
A study has shown that nine of the 18 cities with the highest per capita energy consumption are in Bavaria. That would be a major task for the Bavarian state government to leverage this potential for Germany as an example. “There are many pragmatic solutions, all of which are better than operating nuclear power plants, whose electricity is ultimately exported to France because their reactors are decrepit.”
