Before the decision on extending the operating times of three nuclear power plants in the fall of 2022, an employee of Economics Minister Robert Habeck (Greens) apparently expressed opposition to a reserve operation of the plants. Internal documents suggested that Habeck was not, as previously assumed, forced by Chancellor Olaf Scholz (SPD) to keep the plants running for a few more months, reported the “World on Sunday”.
According to internal communication from Habeck’s staff, the Greens government members themselves considered the official proposal of the party, to put the plants in reserve, as impractical. Thus, Habeck’s state secretary wrote to his minister on August 31, 2022, that whoever shut down would have to go into a revision that would take several weeks. An employee of the Greens faction also wrote that he held the reserve for not practical, as the state secretary reported.
According to the “World on Sunday”, Habeck himself saw it that way too. If the development “does not turn out to be a miracle in the opposite direction”, he would let Isar 2 and the Neckarwestheim nuclear power plant “go online again in the first quarter of 2023”, he wrote to his leadership department on September 26, 2022. The data from France would “speak in favor of us using the reserve then”, he wrote, according to the newspaper.
Apparently, the leading Greens were clear that without the nuclear power plants, the risk of not making it through the winter was too great. They publicly advocated for a shutdown and only bringing the plants back online if absolutely necessary. The same was decided by their party in October. Habeck was only supposed to allow a “limited reserve for an emergency” as per the party’s decision.
Then, a state secretary sent an email to Habeck on the same night after the end of the party conference, listing “possible negotiation chips” as “counterpart for a possible extended operation at Emsland”. The Greens wanted Scholz to provide a “package of immediate measures for wind energy”, “the energy efficiency law”, “outlines for a law on municipal district heating planning”, and “100 billion more for the energy and climate fund”. The “energy efficiency law” is justified by the state secretary, according to the report, with a high symbolic value “in the scene”. In fact, Scholz announced a day later in his letter to the ruling authority that “an ambitious law to increase energy efficiency will be presented”.
Scholz had claimed to have decided alone at the time. In October 2022, he denied that a deal had been made. “Because no agreement was reached, I, as Chancellor, decided”, he said to the newspaper. His spokesman Steffen Hebestreit still insists that it was so.
Robert Habeck answers the question of the “World on Sunday” whether a deal was made, saying: “In the fall of 2022, I wanted the nuclear power plants in the south to be able to operate also in the crisis winter of 2022/2023, and thus longer than the black-green nuclear phase-out had planned. The law to extend the operating times for the winter was written by my department and was on the cabinet’s agenda”, Habeck said. “But the FDP blocked the pragmatic longer operation of the nuclear power plants because it insisted on maximum solutions. This FDP blockade was then overcome by the ruling authority’s decision.