**Key Sentences Extracted for Your Request:**

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"Germany closed three reactors in 2021 and plans to do the same with the other three in 2022."

"Three nuclear-fired power plants will be taken off the grid in Germany on Friday as part of the country's plan to end atomic power."

"But this has sparked fury as Germany does not view nuclear power as a form of clean energy."

"It also plans to shut down its three remaining plants at the end of the year."

"Germany has also claimed that there is a lack of safety requirements in the nuclear field."

"Closure of three nuclear plant's history: But in 2009, a new government came to power and it seemed brief as if nuclear would get a reprieve as a bridging technology to help the country move to renewable energy."

"The country is scrambling to reduce its reliance on gas with a campaign to make households cut back, and a massive national effort has brought gas storage levels up to 81 per cent full."

"Russia turned off supplies of gas in response to the backlash over Moscow's invasion of Ukraine."

"Well, it relies on Russia for 55 per cent of its gas imports, and that’s more than many other countries in Europe."

"So it has been able to diversify."

"So it’s in a bit of a bind, really."

"The greens keep saying that because the price of wind and solar is now as cheap as, or cheaper than, fossil fuels, they’ve won the energy war."

"Germany's upper house of parliament approved measures aimed at helping people hit hard by high energy prices and the high cost of living."

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The upper house of Germany's parliament signed off on a number of major legislative packages on Friday aimed at helping address inflation and soaring energy costsImage: Wolfgang Kumm/dpa/picture alliance
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Germany approves welfare reform, extends nuclear power

2 hours ago

Germany's upper house of parliament approved measures aimed at helping people hit hard by high energy prices and the high cost of living. The country's nuclear power extension will also take effect immediately.

https://p.dw.com/p/4K5HV

The upper house of Germany's parliament, the Bundesrat, approved extending the use of three nuclear power plants, overhauling unemployment benefits and other major legislation on Friday after heated debate among lawmakers.

After receiving approval from the Bundesrat, the measures will soon enter into law. DW breaks down what's set to change in 2023.

Nuclear power extension

The Bundesrat signed off on the extension of three nuclear power plants after the lower house, the Bundestag, approved the move earlier this month.

The nuclear plants — Isar 2, Neckarwestheim 2 and Emsland — will remain operational until April 2023 to provide enough power through the winter. The facilities had been slated to close at the end of this year under Germany's nuclear phaseout plans.

Chancellor Olaf Scholz decided to extend the life of the nuclear plants after Germany found itself facing a severe energy shortage. Russia turned off supplies of gas in response to the backlash over Moscow's invasion of Ukraine.

The extension was bitterly debated among Scholz's center-left Social Democrats (SPD), the environmentalist Greens and the pro-free market Free Democrats (FDP).

With Friday's approval from the upper house, the nuclear power plant extension will take effect immediately.

Germany set to keep nuclear plants running

Unemployment reform

Germany is set for a major welfare overhaul after the Bundesrat signed off on a compromise to reform unemployment benefits.

The changes will go into effect as of January 1, 2023, replacing the current and frequently criticized "Harz IV" unemployment benefits system that has been in place since 2005.

Under the new "Bürgergeld" system (which means "citizen's money"), those who are unemployed will get higher benefits and better vocational skills training.

The initial proposal by Scholz's government was rejected by conservative lawmakers in the Christian Democrats (CDU/CSU) bloc. Under the compromise, benefits could be cut during a six-month "trust period" if an unemployed person is deemed to not be looking hard enough for work.

According to the plans, those receiving benefits will also get more support in job training programs to prepare for permanent employment. The change also is an attempt to mitigate the shortage of skilled workers Germany is currently experiencing.

"This reform is a milestone of social policy in Germany," Scholz told the magazine Focus on Friday after the votes. "This reform put assistance for untrained people who belong to the long-term jobless front and center."

The measure must still be signed by German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier, although nearly all measures approved by the Bundesrat are signed-off by the president.

More money for Germany's unemployed?

Tax relief, higher child benefits

With inflation hitting consumers hard, lawmakers approved measures aimed at softening the blow.

The upper house approved legislation that would help people who receive pay raises that adjust for inflation. The new measures would prevent people having to pay more taxes due to pay raises.

Starting in January 2023, child benefit payments will also be raised. Families will now receive €250 ($260) per month for each child in the household.

The change is a big jump from the current system, which saw parents receive €219 per month for their first and second child, €225 per month for a third child, and €250 for each additional child.

More support for renters

The upper house of parliament also greenlit a law that seeks to help renters deal with skyrocketing heating costs.

Starting from January 1, renters will no longer have to shoulder the costs of heating with oil and natural gas — landlords and property owners will have to chip-in as well.

For buildings that are not energy efficient and produce a high proportion of CO2 emissions, landlords will need to pay more — and not the renters.

In addition, more people in low-income households will receive a housing allowance from the government. The expansion to the law means 1.4 million households are eligible for the payments, as opposed to the current 600,000 households that qualify.

While you're here: Every Tuesday, DW editors round up what is happening in German politics and society. You can sign up here for the weekly email newsletter Berlin Briefing.

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"Germany closed three reactors in 2021 and plans to do the same with the other three in 2022."

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Content: World

Berlin against, Rome is silent, Paris in favor. Nuclear power explodes in the EU

Germany closed three reactors in 2021 and plans to do the same with the other three in 2022. Belgium shares the same idea, “shut down” its seven plants by 2025. Spain, which has some reactors in operation as well, does not consider them “green” at all. Luxembourg dismisses the proposal to include the atom in the green taxonomy as a “provocation”. Austria of the atom does not want to know, with 82% of its primary energy production made from renewables (data 2019), and is studying a legal action against the Commission. France is delighted to see nuclear power (77% of its domestic production) taken into account by Brussels. Italy, which is fond of Minister Cingolani’s idea of increasing its gas extractions, is currently silent and at least hopes for a golden rule to exclude “green” investments from the calculation of the deficit. A few days after the publication of the draft of the European Commission on the green taxonomy, the distances between the 27 instead of narrowing, are widening and if yesterday they seemed divided, today they show themselves to be shattered.

The definition of the green taxonomy is fundamental in orienting investments: with the “green” stamp, industrial and infrastructure projects can be much more attractive for private capital. However, the decision to include nuclear and gas in the EU’s green taxonomy has met with harsh criticism already in recent weeks, when rumors had not yet taken the form of a draft Commission. The technicians from Brussels and the team of experts who collaborated in the drafting of the central document for the definition of the EU energy planning in the context of the Green New Deal tried to circumvent the foreseeable resistance by introducing some conditions for the two sources that are not neutral with respect to the climate and the environment. Nuclear and gas, first of all, will be considered compatible with the green taxonomy only for a defined period of time and “to the extent that they contribute to the transition towards climate neutrality and do not significantly damage the environment”, according to an official of Brussels. “The Commission sees the future energy mix as a predominantly renewable or low-carbon energy system. We really hope that this proposal will help bring about the change we need and channel private funding towards low-emission energy sources ”.

In fact, it means that investments in nuclear power will be “green” only if the projects presented have a well defined plan, funds and site for the disposal of radioactive waste in total safety. Building permits will only be allowed until 2045. It is worth remembering that at the moment there is still talk of third generation or third plus nuclear power. Not the fourth, the (slag-free) fusion that experts believe may have a role on an industrial scale no earlier than the middle of the century. As for gas, investments in power plants will be green only if they contribute to emissions of less than 270 grams of CO2 equivalent per kWh and replace more polluting fossil fuel plants. They will need to obtain a building permit before 2030.

On gas, the Commission’s conditions appear much more stringent. It is a non-solid fossil source, certainly less polluting than coal and to which Italy looks with interest, having unused methane deposits. Moreover, in a European context of high prices and constant reduction of supplies from the main supplier, Russia, for reasons of a geopolitical nature. But it is on nuclear power that the clash risks worsening at the community level.

“We believe nuclear technology is dangerous,” government spokesman Steffen Hebestreit told reporters in Berlin, noting that the question of what to do with the radioactive waste remains unresolved. Hebestreit added that Germany “expressly rejects” the EU assessment on atomic energy and has repeatedly affirmed this position towards the Commission. Germany is now considering the next steps to take. Germany is set to shut down the remaining three nuclear power plants later this year and phase out coal by 2030, while its neighbor France aims to modernize existing reactors and build new ones to meet energy needs. Berlin plans to rely on natural gas until it can be replaced by non-polluting energy sources. The opposite paths taken by two of the EU’s largest economies have led to an embarrassing situation for the Commission. The draft EU executive branch concludes that both nuclear power and natural gas can be considered sustainable under certain conditions for investment purposes.

Hebestreit said the German government’s goal is to use natural gas only as a “bridge technology” and replace it with non-polluting alternatives such as hydrogen produced from renewable energy by 2045, the deadline the country has set for becoming climate neutral. . The spokesman did not say whether Chancellor Olaf Scholz supports the opinion of the Minister of Economy and Climate Robert Habeck that the European Commission’s proposals are a form of “greenwashing”.

Germany has pulled the plug on three of its last six nuclear power plants. The Brokdorf, Grohnde and Gundremmingen C reactors, operated by the E.On and Rwe utilities, were closed on December 31st after 35 years of operation. The last three nuclear power plants – Isar 2, Emsland and Neckarwestheim II – will be shut down by the end of 2022. However, closure does not mean decommissioning, which will take much longer and is expected to take place by 2040 in the case of Brokdorf, for example. .

In 2021, the six nuclear power plants contributed about 12% of electricity generation in Germany. The German energy mix consists of 41% renewables, 28% coal and 15% gas. By 2030, Germany aims to meet 80% of energy demand with renewables. This is not the case in France where – given Eurostat 2019 – 77.6% of its energy produced comes from the atom and only 20% from renewable.

Germany is not alone in the firm opposition to the proposal put forward by Brussels: the draft “is a provocation from a procedural point of view” and “in terms of content it hides the risk of greenwashing”, wrote on Twitter the Minister of Energy of the Luxembourg, Claude Turmes, saying he is ready to “examine the proposal in detail and discuss further steps” together with Germany and Austria, equally opposed to including nuclear power among sustainable investments. The proposal was sent to governments on Friday, “in a nocturnal and nebulous action. This says a lot about transparency ”, attacked Turmes.

The same tones used by Vienna: if these are the plans “we will sue”, wrote on Twitter the Austrian Federal Minister for Climate, Environment and Energy, Leonore Gewessler, highlighting that nuclear energy is “dangerous and not it represents a solution in the fight against the climate crisis ”. Austria has no reactors and produces almost all of its energy from renewable sources.

The Spanish government also rejected the European Commission’s proposal to include nuclear and natural gas energy in the EU’s “green” taxonomy. According to Madrid, this is “a step backwards” and “a wrong signal” for the financial markets. Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for Ecological Transition and Demographic Challenge, Teresa Ribera, stressed that “regardless of whether we can continue to invest in one or the other, we believe they are not green or sustainable energies”. Spain – he added – “is a firm supporter of green taxonomy as a key tool to have common references that can be used by investors to achieve the decarbonisation of the economy and climate neutrality by 2050”, but include nuclear and gas “It would be a step backwards,” according to the government official Sanchez. “It makes no sense and sends the wrong signals for the European energy transition as a whole,” he stressed. While admitting that both nuclear power and natural gas have a role to play in the transition, this is “limited in time”. Member States have until 12 January to provide their response to the Commission. Then, once published, it will have to pass the scrutiny of the EU Council and Parliament, where the environmentalist parties are also announcing a battle.

In 2019, France was the country that produced the largest share of energy in the EU (20% of the total), followed by Germany (17%), Poland (9.6%), Italy and Sweden (6%). ). However, the debate on green taxonomy is intertwined with energy security (or sovereignty) in a particular historical phase, marked by risks to the security of supply due to geopolitical and military reasons, as shown by the tensions on the Ukrainian border. Primary energy production in the EU in 2019 was distributed among various energy sources, the most important of which in terms of the size of its contribution were renewables, with over a third (36.5%) of the total. Second place for nuclear power, with 32.0% of total primary energy production, with France in the lead, followed by Belgium (77% of domestic production in 2019) which, however, is about to abound in nuclear power like Germany. However, all European energy production is not enough to meet its needs: more than half of Europe’s energy is imported. The EU energy dependency rate exceeds 50%.

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Content: This is an audio transcript of the FT News Briefing podcast episode: Russia’s move on Ukraine triggers western sanctions

Marc Filippino
Good morning from the Financial Times. Today is Wednesday, February 23rd, and this is your FT News Briefing.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

Russia is edging closer to war. President Vladimir Putin is endorsing Russian-backed separatists who claim the entire Donbas region of eastern Ukraine. Meanwhile, western powers are pushing back both with sanctions and by suspending the Nord Stream 2 pipeline project. But can Germany kick its Russian gas habit?

Guy Chazan
Its industry has really become addicted to relatively cheap Russian gas so it’s in a bit of a bind, really.

Marc Filippino
Plus, how are Russian markets holding up through all this? Unsurprisingly, not so great. We’ll tell you more. I’m Marc Filippino, and here’s the news you need to start your day.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

Very late on Monday night, Russian president Vladimir Putin decided to send what he called peacekeeping troops into eastern Ukraine. They’ll support two Russian-backed separatist states that he’s recognised as independent. This crossed a line for western powers, and they retaliated with a salvo of sanctions against Moscow on Tuesday. The US is targeting two of Russia’s largest financial institutions, as well as Russian elites and their family members. The FT’s Henry Foy has more on Europe’s sanctions towards Russia.

Henry Foy
So the European Union has decided to sanction a lot of individuals and entities. They’ve gone after 351 members of the Russian parliament. These are elected MPs, elected representatives who voted for the independence of these statelets, these separatists to be recognised for troops to be sent in, and also 27 individuals and entities who are linked to actions that have undermined Ukraine’s sovereignty. The key thing here, though, is the EU, just like the US and the UK who also announced their own sanction packages, are saying this is not it. This is just the first wave. And if you continue aggression against Ukraine and if there is a full invasion of the rest of Ukraine not held by these pro-Russian separatists, then there will be more — much, much more. This first wave is targeted. It’s not particularly economically damaging, but it’s a sign that there is unity across the west in standing up to this.

Marc Filippino
Henry, is all this enough to push Russia from further escalation?

Henry Foy
Well Marc, officials I speak to here in Brussels, in the EU, inside of Nato, tell me basically, no. That effectively, Putin has made a decision that he is going to go the whole way and invade Ukraine. That’s a decision that he’s built up over years. It’s an emotional decision. It’s an irrational one. And there’s really little that the west can do about it, given that Putin has thrown away and torn up all the diplomatic efforts. And he will take these sanctions and the sanctions will slow him down. They will affect the Russian economy. They will make an invasion more painful than perhaps it would have been before. However, they’re not going to stop him if that is what he intends to do, and most people, the Nato intelligence community, the defence community, believes that that is his decision.

Marc Filippino
Now, how is Nato’s approaching all this? You know, a crucial issue for Russia is that it wants to keep Ukraine and other former Soviet countries out of Nato. What’s its role right now?

Henry Foy
So Nato’s role, they’ve been very clear about this, is to protect itself, to protect alliance members, to protect Nato members in Europe. So what they’ve done in recent months and weeks is to deploy more troops in eastern European countries that border Ukraine and Russia effectively as deterrents to Russia to say, look, if you are going to invade Ukraine, you’re not going to come anywhere near us because we are going to defend our own, our own members, but also to help with any cross-border fallout from an invasion of Ukraine, which is likely to be in the form of refugees, potentially spillover events such as terrorism.

Marc Filippino
Henry Foy is the FT’s European diplomatic correspondent.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

The news of Russia sending troops to Ukraine sent the price of oil up to nearly 100 bucks a barrel yesterday, and there was other energy news too. Germany has frozen the approval process on the controversial Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline. Chancellor Olaf Scholz says Berlin would not approve the Kremlin-backed project. The pipeline is owned by the Russian-backed company Gazprom and would have increased a Russian gas supplies to Germany and the rest of Europe. The pipeline project has been in the works for years, and there has been a lot of pressure on Germany to stop it. But now that it’s been stopped, what’s next for Germany’s energy sector? Our Berlin bureau chief Guy Chazan joins me now to talk about this. Welcome to the show, Guy.

Guy Chazan
Hi.

Marc Filippino
So Guy, one of our Lex columnists wrote that Germany has been like a junkie in its addiction to Russian gas. How dependent is Germany on Russian energy?

Guy Chazan
Well, it relies on Russia for 55 per cent of its gas imports, and that’s more than many other countries in Europe. It’s a sort of, it’s an indictment in a way of the country’s kind of energy policies over the past few years because in 2011 it took this rather controversial decision to phase out all its nuclear power stations by 2022, and it’s now also phasing out its coal-fired power stations by 2030. So it has all these very ambitious goals to change its energy mix, but that has made it relatively more reliant on gas. And when you’re more reliant on gas, you’re more reliant on Gazprom because that’s Europe’s major supplier.

Marc Filippino
Yeah, and Russia, in response to Germany’s move, said, OK, well, you know, this is going to have an impact on already high energy prices. How hard will higher prices hit Germany’s economy?

Guy Chazan
Well, we’ve already been getting a taste of it because over the past few months, energy experts have said that Gazprom seems to be deliberately withholding supplies to the spot market in Europe, and that has driven up prices. But it’s basically destroyed the reputation of Gazprom as a reliable supplier in Germany. The green minister of the economy yesterday said that explicitly, and that’s really a big change because in the past, whenever you sort of ask German officials, you know, what about this relationship with Russia? They always say, well, you know, even in the worst times during the cold war, Russia was a reliable supplier. Those flows of gas were never affected. But that seems to have changed in recent months, and the perception of Gazprom has accordingly changed as well in Germany.

Marc Filippino
So given that this perception of Gazprom has changed, what alternatives does Germany have when it comes to energy sources?

Guy Chazan
Well, none at the moment. That’s the problem. It basically is building a terminal for the import of LNG, liquefied natural gas. But that is very expensive, much more expensive than Gazprom’s gas. So it’s in a bit of a bind, really. But the big difference, I suppose, really from the Merkel era, the governments of Angela Merkel, is that we now have this government with the Greens, and they are determined for Germany to go carbon neutral in the next 25 years. And if that ambition is achieved, then there will be much, much more renewables, much more wind and solar, and much less reliance on fossil fuels such as oil, coal and gas.

Marc Filippino
Less of a question on the economics of this whole thing and more about the safety of German people. I mean, it’s the middle of February. If people aren’t able to heat their homes, is there a potential issue with people being safe and warm in Germany?

Guy Chazan
Well, I don’t think so, because the consensus is that Gazprom and Russia would not do anything as suicidal as withhold gas supplies to Germany. I mean that literally would be destroying an energy relationship, which is mutually, very, very beneficial. It’s not just Germany that benefits from this. It’s Russia, too, which relies very, very heavily on the flow of foreign currency into its exchequer. I think actually, if it were to come to that, Germany is actually quite well placed at the moment because the winter is drawing to an end and it’s getting sort of LNG shipments via Rotterdam. So it has been able to diversify. And apparently ministers have been saying the energy security situation is OK at the moment.

Marc Filippino
Guy Chazan is the FT’s Berlin bureau chief. Thank you, Guy.

Guy Chazan
Thanks.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

Marc Filippino
Moscow’s main stock benchmark has collapsed by a third since October. Markets have been responding to the escalating crisis in Ukraine. Investors are mostly worried about two things — one, a full-blown invasion by Russia into Ukraine, and two, how sanctions, which you know, we talked about earlier, will affect assets. Our capital markets correspondent Tommy Stubbington has been following this and says there’s one area in particular investors are watching.

Tommy Stubbington
Possibly the most extreme form of sanctions in terms of their impact on the Russian stock market would be an outright ban on trading Russian stocks or Russian bonds on the secondary market, which would make it effectively impossible for western investors to hold those assets. Now we’re not there yet, but I mean, obviously any outside risks that investors see will lead to investors effectively dumping the Russian assets that they hold, and they do hold those assets largely because they are included in the indices, the investment benchmarks, the billions and billions of dollars of investments follow.

Marc Filippino
Now how insulated is the market overall? And is it likely that the Kremlin would react?

Tommy Stubbington
Share price declines, on their own, are probably something that I imagine the Kremlin wouldn’t be too worried about. They’d be more worried about the sanctions hurting at the level of the whole economy. And on that basis, the Russian economy is fairly well insulated from sanctions by the high level of dollar reserves that their central bank holds, which, you know, should be able to protect the rouble from any kind of run from overseas investors. And so the answer is the, you know, the Russian economy is certainly more sanctions-proof than possibly it was in the past.

Marc Filippino
Tommy Stubbington is the FT’s capital markets correspondent.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

You can read more on all of these stories at FT.com. This has been your daily FT News Briefing. Make sure you check back tomorrow for the latest business news.

This transcript has been automatically generated. If by any chance there is an error please send the details for a correction to: typo@ft.com. We will do our best to make the amendment as soon as possible.

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"Three nuclear-fired power plants will be taken off the grid in Germany on Friday as part of the country's plan to end atomic power."

Title:

Content: Three nuclear-fired power plants will be taken off the grid in Germany on Friday as part of the country's plan to end atomic power.

"The nuclear phaseout makes our country safer and helps to avoid radioactive waste," said Federal Environment and Nuclear Safety Minister Steffi Lemke.

"It is now essential to ... advance the search for a final repository for high-level radioactive waste as well as permanent solutions for low- and medium-level radioactive waste," the environment ministry said.

Former German Chancellor Angela Merkel speeded up the phaseout following the 2011 Fukushima accident in Japan.

Friday's shutdown affects power plants in Brokdorf in Schleswig-Holstein, Grohnde in Lower Saxony and Gundremmingen C in Bavaria.

Germany's remaining three nuclear plants — Emsland in Lower Saxony, Isar 2 in Bavaria and Neckarwestheim 2 in Baden-Württemberg — will be closed by the end of 2022 "at the latest," the environment ministry said.

"Since 2011, Germany has been drawing a line under a highly problematic technology in an orderly, reliable process," Lemke said.

Nuclear accounts for about 10 percent of Germany's electricity production. The shutdown has sparked criticism as Germany will have to dramatically ramp up renewable energy and has also increased its reliance on highly polluting coal-fired power.

"Security of supply in Germany continues to be guaranteed," said Robert Habeck, federal climate and economy minister. He added that reliable and "sustainably generated electricity" is a "central requirement for aligning our economy and industry toward climate neutrality."

That stance puts Berlin at loggerheads with France, where nuclear is the largest element of its energy mix (and also helps supply Germany).

EU Internal Market Commissioner Thierry Breton said in September that existing nuclear plants, which provide low-carbon electricity essential to the green transition, can be kept running "for two, five, 10 years," adding: "Why deprive ourselves of this production capacity?"

France is planning to scale down the share of nuclear in its electricity mix from 75 percent to 50 percent by 2035, but President Emmanuel Macron said in November that France "will restart the construction of nuclear reactors" while "continuing to develop renewable energies."

Macron also said France will invest €1 billion into research and development, notably into small modular reactors.

Belgium recently decided to shut down all its nuclear power plants by 2025, but plans to invest €100 million in new generation nuclear reactors and research.

More from ... Louise Guillot

Title:

Content: Home / News / World /  Germany quits nuclear power; shuts final 3 plants
Back

Germany has shut its final three nuclear plants, marking the end of the country's end of nuclear era that has spanned more than 60 years.

Nuclear power has long been contentious in Germany.

The move has come as Germany's eyes achieve its green goal. Steffi Lemke, Germany’s Federal Minister for the Environment and Consumer Protection and a Green Party member, "The position of the German government is clear: nuclear power is not green. Nor is it sustainable".

Closure of three nuclear plant's history:

Germany shut three plants-- Emsland, Isar 2, and Neckarwestheim, representing the culmination of a plan set in motion more than 20 years ago.

During the 1970s, a strong anti-nuclear movement emerged in Germany. The movement gave birth to the green party, which is now part of governing coalition.

However, it was in the 2000s the German government pledged to phase out nuclear power and start shutting down plants.

But in 2009, a new government came to power and it seemed brief as if nuclear would get a reprieve as a bridging technology to help the country move to renewable energy.

Then Fukushima happened. In 2011, an earthquake and tsunami caused three reactors of the Fukushima Daiichi power plant to melt down.

Three days later then-Chancellor Angela Merkel who was previously pro-nuclear, announced Germany would accelerate a nuclear phase-out, with older plants shuttered immediately.

Russia's invasion of Ukraine provided another plot twist.

Germany isn’t the only country committed to walking away from nuclear — Italy gave up the technology in 1990, and Lithuania recently struck a deal to dismantle its Soviet-era reactors, which have sat idle for over a decade. But in many advanced economies, nuclear is experiencing a resurgence.

On Sunday, Finland will start regular power production at Europe’s newest and biggest reactor. The 1,600-megawatt Olkiluoto-3 unit that faced years of delays had been planned to enter commercial production on Monday. France is planning to build at least six new reactors by 2050 as well as experiment with smaller, modular ones. The UK has similar ambitions. And even in Japan, after a decade of paralysis following the nuclear accident in Fukushima, the public is warming up to the use of nuclear power. The Japanese government wants to restart reactors that have sat idle since the disaster and to extend the lifespan of existing units.

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"But this has sparked fury as Germany does not view nuclear power as a form of clean energy."

Title:

Content: EU chaos! Macron and Scholz in furious bust-up over EU energy plans: ‘Risky and expensive'

FRENCH President Emmanuel Macron and German Chancellor Olaf Scholz are locked in a furious bust-up over EU energy policy plans as disagreements have sparked division in the bloc.

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Macron wields 'tools to set EU agenda'

While France has been pushing for nuclear to be included in the EU’s sustainable finance taxonomy, Germany is in the process of completely phasing out the energy source in the country. The EU’s taxonomy is intended to hand a green badge to companies and activities — or to withhold it — to “help shift investments where they are most needed". This is part of the bloc’s aim to direct funding towards energy sources with a low or zero carbon footprint.

But this has sparked fury as Germany does not view nuclear power as a form of clean energy.

Mr Macron wants gas and nuclear to be labelled as a “transitional” source under the taxonomy as he claims they are needed for the clean energy transition.

He says that this is because renewables are “intermittent, and thus not totally substitutable, even with our interconnections [in Europe], for non-intermittent sources of electricity production” like gas or nuclear power.

And these calls do not come as much of a surprise, given that 70 percent of French electricity is generated by nuclear power.

Mr Macron has pointed to the verdict from experts on the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) to back up his calls.

Macron and Scholz are in a furious energy bust-up (Image: Getty )

Emmanuel Macron is pushing for nuclear power to be included in the EU taxonomy (Image: Getty )

They claim that “nuclear power is one of the solutions to decarbonise our economies”.

And this seems to have convinced Brussels, as the EU Commission drew up a draft proposal, circulated on 31 December, for this to come into effect.

Subject to a consultation period until Friday (21 January), It gave EU members and others just three weeks to analyse the proposal and provide their own comments.

Germany is strongly opposed to the nuclear plans and has been phasing out nuclear power for over two decades.

It also plans to shut down its three remaining plants at the end of the year.

READ MORE: World holds breath as Ukraine to fire rocket amid Russia tension

Olaf Scholz's Government is opposed to the EU's proposal (Image: Getty )

But it is not Berlin who disapproves of the proposal.

The EU Platform on Sustainable Finance, a European Commission advisory body, has torn the proposal apart.

In an opinion piece, it argued that nuclear power is not an entirely clean energy source, and that fossil gas is “far from green”.

Under the EU’s draft proposal, gas-fired power plants would get a “transitional” investment label if they meet a certain criteria.

That is if they use “at least 30 percent of renewable or low-carbon gases as of 1 January 2026, and at least 55 percent of renewable or low-carbon gases as of 1 January 2030”.

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Germany argued nuclear is not a clean energy source (Image: Getty )

And as of January 1, 2036, the Commission said all gas-fired power plants would have to “switch to renewable or low-carbon gases” to qualify for the EU’s green investment label.

But under EU rules, no technology can be considered green if it causes “significant harm” to any of the taxonomy’s six environmental objectives.

Those are climate change mitigation and adaptation, water protection, the transition to a circular economy, pollution prevention, and biodiversity protection.

Germany has been kicking up a fuss over the proposals, calling them “risky and expensive” in a letter sent to Brussels.

Vice Chancellor Robert Habeck said in a joint statement with Environment Minister Steffi Lemke: “As the federal government, we have once again clearly expressed our rejection of the inclusion of nuclear energy. It is risky and expensive."

Germany has also claimed that there is a lack of safety requirements in the nuclear field.

Robert Habeck sent a letter to Brussels slamming the proposal (Image: Getty )

And it argued that the lengthy construction of new reactors "does not offer a short-term opportunity" to phase out carbon-intensive energy sources such as coal.

But while it has poured cold water over nuclear plans, Germany does not seem so opposed to the inclusion of gas.

In the letter sent to Brussels, it reads that gas used in "ultra-modern and efficient gas-fired power plants forms a bridge for a limited transitional period".

But the German Government did mention that the proposed fuel switch targets to low-carbon and renewable gases laid out by the taxonomy proposal are not realistic.

And Mr Macron is travelling to Berlin today to meet with Mr Scholz.

While the leaders’ meeting will focus on the Russia’s mounting pressure on Ukraine, the energy plans will no doubt be a topic of conversation too.

"It also plans to shut down its three remaining plants at the end of the year."

"Germany has also claimed that there is a lack of safety requirements in the nuclear field."

"Closure of three nuclear plant's history: But in 2009, a new government came to power and it seemed brief as if nuclear would get a reprieve as a bridging technology to help the country move to renewable energy."

Title:

Content: 'Sustainability challenges' What Big Oil, green movement conceal from us

The US funds its military aid to Ukraine with tax dollars and some of America’s allies fund Putin’s military with purchases of his oil and gas exports. And that’s the absurdity that has come to define the Russian invasion
Representative image

NEW YORK: It has long been said that the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result. By that definition, we’re the ones detached from reality if we keep accepting what the oil industry and the green movement keep telling us over and over again and expecting a different result. The greens keep saying that because the price of wind and solar is now as cheap as, or cheaper than, fossil fuels, they’ve won the energy war. Game, set, match — welcome to the green planet.

The oil companies say — as they have in each previous energy crisis since 1973 — that the only answer to this energy crisis is the one they’ve offered for the past 49 years: drill, baby, drill. Welcome to reality. Well, they’re both wrong, and accepting the repetition of either of these tired shibboleths is hurting us economically, environmentally and geopolitically — especially, of late, geopolitically.

Because our continued addiction to fossil fuels is bolstering Vladimir Putin’s petrodictatorship and creating a situation where we in the West are — yes, say it with me now — funding both sides of the war. We fund our military aid to Ukraine with our tax dollars and some of America’s allies fund Putin’s military with purchases of his oil and gas exports.

And if that’s not the definition of insanity, then I don’t know what is. Have no illusion — these sins of the green movement and the oil industry are not equal. The greens are trying to fix a real, planet-threatening problem, even if their ambition exceeds their grasp. The oil and coal companies know that what they are doing is incompatible with a stable, healthy environment. Yes, they are right that without them there would be no global economy today. But unless they use their immense engineering talents to become energy companies, not just fossil fuel companies, there will be no livable economy tomorrow.

Let’s look at both. For too long, too many in the green movement have treated the necessary and urgent shift we need to make from fossil fuels to renewable energy as though it were like flipping a switch — just get off oil, get off gasoline, get off coal and get off nuclear — and do it NOW, without having put in place the kind of transition mechanisms, clean energy sources and market incentives required to make such a massive shift in our energy system.

It’s Germany in 2011, suddenly deciding after the Fukushima accident to phase out its 17 relatively clean and reliable nuclear reactors, which provided some 25 percent of the country’s electricity. This, even though Germany had nowhere near enough solar, wind, geothermal or hydro to replace that nuclear power. So now it’s burning more coal and gas.

A 2019 working paper for the U.S. National Bureau of Economic Research found that in Germany “the lost nuclear electricity production due to the phaseout was replaced primarily by coal-fired production and net electricity imports. The social cost of this shift from nuclear to coal is approximately $12 billion per year. Over 70 percent of this cost comes from the increased mortality risk associated with exposure to the local air pollution emitted when burning fossil fuels.”

Today, the European Union is drawing up a plan to break its addiction to Russian oil and gas by 2027, but, in the meantime, Putin is laughing all the way to the bank. As CNN reported in April, citing a report by the Center for Research on Energy and Clean Air: “Russian revenues from fossil fuel exports to the European Union soared during the first two months of the Ukraine invasion” — to $46.3 billion. That was more than double the value of Russian energy imported by the E.U. during the same two-month period a year earlier.

That was not because the E.U.’s volume of imports doubled. Higher oil and gas prices accounted for most of that increase. In other words, Putin starts a war that creates instability, which drives up oil prices, so he makes twice as much money exporting roughly the same amount of oil.

While Germany jumped off nuclear before it had a safety net of sufficient clean alternatives, at least it has been on a serious, path-defining quest to get them. Indeed, the whole world owes Germany a huge debt for driving down the price of solar panels and wind turbines through the subsidies and tax incentives it created. In Germany, wind turbines, solar panels and other renewables covered 54 percent of power consumption this past January and February — which is AMAZING. In 2021, renewable energy sources accounted for only about 12 percent of total U.S. energy that was consumed.

Still, the most important delusion of the green movement today — of which I am a proud, if grouchy, member — is telling itself that because the price of wind and solar technology has fallen so low now that it can beat coal and natural gas in most markets, often even without subsidies, it’s “game over” for fossil fuels. I wish. Price is only half the story.

If you can’t install the transmission lines — to get that sun and wind power from the vast open spaces where it is generated to the big urban areas where it is needed — and if you cannot set aside more land to install the scale of solar and wind farms you need to replace coal, gas or nuclear, it doesn’t matter that your renewables are cheaper on a per-kilowatt-hour basis.

And today transmission is a huge problem in the U.S. and Europe, where many people don’t want wind farms, solar fields, electricity lines — or natural gas pipelines — in their backyard. I wish this were not the case, but there is no immaculate pathway from brown energy to green energy. The road is paved with cruel trade-offs. Pick your poison — but grow up. Meanwhile, ever since the 1973 Arab oil embargo, the big oil companies have basically said in each successive crisis: Sure, we need more clean energy, but you have to understand — it doesn’t scale. Right now, we’re in an emergency, so we just need to drill more. You hear the same refrain today, which is why we’re in danger of wasting yet another oil crisis and never breaking our fossil fuel addiction.

For those oil companies sitting on large natural gas deposits — which are needed in this transition because gas is cleaner than coal — it means tapping those deposits but doing so with zero methane leakage; otherwise gas becomes as bad as coal. But it also means thinking much more seriously about how fossil fuel companies truly make the transition to become “energy companies,” not just oil companies, so they can leverage their amazing pools of engineering talent to provide more energy solutions that save the planet, not warm it.

Friedman is an Opinion Columnist with NYT©2022

The New York Times

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"The country is scrambling to reduce its reliance on gas with a campaign to make households cut back, and a massive national effort has brought gas storage levels up to 81 per cent full."

Title:

Content: How decades of complacency have left Germany facing a cold, dark winter

Betrayed by its own elite, the country is at risk of social unrest

Germany is facing its worst winter for 75 years. The impending catastrophe risks crippling its economy, sweeping away its government and bringing chaos to the heart of Europe.

In 1946-47, perhaps half a million Germans starved or froze to death in their ruined cities. Older Germans still shudder at the memory of the “Hunger Winter”. Some blamed the Nazis, others the Allied occupation. In fact, the British sent food, fuel and clothing they could ill afford to spare themselves.

Now Europe’s largest economy is heading for a winter of recession, rationing and possible blackouts. This time, though, there is nobody to blame except Germany’s complacent – and in some cases corrupt – political establishment.

As Vladimir Putin chokes off Russian gas supplies – already down to a fifth of their pre-war level – by closing the Nord Stream 1 pipeline for “maintenance” yet again next week, the lamps are going out for Olaf Scholz and his “traffic light” coalition of Social Democrats, Liberal and Greens.

'Autumn of rage'

The Bundesbank has been predicting a recession and the latest figures show that business activity is already contracting. Inflation, which hit 8.5 per cent last month, is expected to keep rising along with the rest of the eurozone, probably into double figures.

Yet for historical reasons Germans won’t just accept high inflation as a consequence of the war in Ukraine. The world remembers the hyperinflation that undermined the Weimar Republic a century ago; only older Germans recall the hyperinflation after the Second World War, which lasted longer. For three years Germany’s only stable currency was American cigarettes. No wonder Germans have been allergic to inflation ever since.

It is true that Germans are not yet demanding big pay rises or going on strike. But energy prices are already rising exponentially. The country's one-year ahead power price has skyrocketed to almost €1,000 per megawatt-hour, a jump of more than 720pc since the start of 2022. If Putin turns off the tap, bringing the mighty German economy to a juddering halt this winter, there is a real danger of civil unrest.

Intelligence officials are warning that extremist organisations, such as the neo-Nazis of Combat 18, are planning an “autumn of rage”. As a foretaste, in the old Prussian town of Neuruppin near Berlin, there were ugly scenes this month as Scholz was shouted down by far-Left and far-Right protesters.

But the panic and indignation now brewing go far beyond the ranks of the “unteachable” extremists.

Germans sense that unaccountable elites have ceded control of their country’s destiny to Putin. The more they are must pay him for Russian gas, the bigger his war chest with which to perpetrate genocide in Ukraine.

Forcing Germany to be complicit in a colossal crime against humanity is a diabolical twist in the vengeance that Putin is now exacting upon Europe for backing Ukraine. According to The Economist’s Christian Odendahl, at present prices Germany will need to spend 8.4 per cent of its GDP on gas. Hitherto it was just 1 per cent.

Already preparations are underway for central heating to be rationed or even switched off, forcing residents to seek shelter in schools or town halls.

The country is scrambling to reduce its reliance on gas with a campaign to make households cut back, and a massive national effort has brought gas storage levels up to 81 per cent full.

Food prices, meanwhile, rose at a rate of nearly 15 per cent in July. Those who fear being unable to afford to heat their homes or feed their families are prey to angst and anger.

Actions have consequences... or do they?

Few foresaw the Russian invasion of Ukraine, let alone its devastating consequences for Europe. But it is dawning on the German people that the seeds of the present crisis were sown over the quarter of a century from 1998 to 2022, under Angela Merkel and her predecessor, Gerhard Schröder.

These were the years of plenty for Germany, when Berlin dominated the European Union, ensuring that its export-led economy benefited from the single currency while loading the social costs on to its poorer neighbours. But Germany’s dirty secret was cheap Russian energy.

Under Schröder – who went on to become one of Putin’s “useful idiots” – German industry began to abandon its postwar reliance on coal and nuclear energy in favour of Russian gas and renewables.

In 2011, after the Fukushima accident, Mrs Merkel announced that all German nuclear power plants would be closed down. It was a pyrrhic victory for the Greens but backed by all the major parties. Public opinion had been turned against nuclear energy in the 1980s by the Soviet-funded “peace movement”. Now the Greens are the keystone of the Scholz coalition.

Even in the country’s present predicament, Robert Habeck, the Green Vice-Chancellor and Environment Minister, is refusing to reverse the exit from nuclear to alleviate the energy crisis, though it is still possible over time to reactivate a number of nuclear power stations.

Yet Berlin is demanding that 26 other EU member states make huge cuts in energy use this winter to help Germany – to the irritation of the Spanish and others, who don’t depend on Russian gas and recall lectures from Berlin during the eurozone crisis about actions having consequences.

For decades, the Kremlin acted as Germany’s geopolitical drug-dealer, tempting Berlin to become ever more addicted to the energy that fuelled its manufacturing, pharmaceutical and chemical factories. Now that the Germans are about to go cold turkey, they are discovering how cynically the national interest was betrayed by their politicians and captains of industry.

With Schröder as its salesman, a new Nord Stream 2 pipeline was built under the Baltic Sea — with the blessing of Mrs Merkel, who fended off Anglo-American pressure to cancel what was regarded as a threat to European energy security.

Last year, as Russian tanks massed on the Ukrainian border and Nato warned of imminent invasion, Gazprom redoubled its efforts to keep the flagship project on track.

The Russian energy giant poured €192 million (£163m) into an environmental foundation set up by Manuela Schwesig, the Social Democratic premier of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern — the state that hosted Nord Stream 2 and stood to gain most. She proceeded to denounce the US for opposing the pipeline, claiming that American sanctions were purely self-interested.

Putin’s stooges almost succeeded in persuading Scholz to defy his Nato allies. He dithered until the eve of February’s invasion before shelving Nord Stream 2.

Now, after six months of Europe’s worst war since 1945, some German politicians are once again calling for the pipeline to be opened “so that people do not have to freeze in winter and our industry does not suffer serious damage”, as Wolfgang Kubicki, Vice-President of the German Parliament, puts it.

Meanwhile Ms Schwesig has just been re-elected as leader of the Social Democrats in her state by a large majority. Schröder has yet to be expelled from the party, let alone sanctioned.

Germany’s Achilles’ heel

This is the measure of Germany’s abject reliance, not only on Russian energy, but on the Russian state. For Putin, gas and oil were only ever a means to an end. He has always wanted to reduce the Germans — towards whom Russians have traditionally had an inferiority complex — to a status of servility.

Stalin only succeeded in dividing Germany. Putin seeks to turn the entire Federal Republic into his client state — and thereby impose his will upon Europe.

With the unerring eye of the predator, Putin grasped that energy was Germany’s Achilles’ heel. A single plant of a single corporation, the headquarters of the chemical and pharmaceutical giant BASF at Ludwigshafen, uses as much energy as Denmark.

Over the last 25 years, Germany’s craving for cheap energy led it into an unequal relationship with Russia — what the philosopher Hegel called “the dialectic of master and slave”.

Putin saw that some German politicians could be bought (Schröder), others bamboozled (Merkel), and still others bullied (Scholz). Other EU countries followed the German example by relying heavily on Moscow for energy, influenced by the evasion and ambivalence that has characterised Berlin’s policy for decades.

Germany, whose economy is substantially larger than Britain’s, has given just £1 billion in military aid to Ukraine compared to the UK’s £3.5 billion. The United States has given ten times as much as the EU. Yet Ukraine is a European country under genocidal attack.

The reluctance to provoke Putin that still prevails in wide circles of the Federal Republic is rooted in exaggerated notions of Russian military power, economic importance and cultural pre-eminence.

German fatalism about Russia’s ability to absorb casualties and yet win ultimate victory reflects folk memories of the Eastern Front. But Putin, unlike Stalin, does not have a vast conscript army at his disposal, he does not enjoy technical superiority and he cannot afford the war of attrition that he has unleashed. Nor are the Russian people united against an invading force in defence of their homeland. Only in Berlin do they think this is another Stalingrad.

This historical myopia has much to do with the long-standing German habit of subsuming the other nations that made up the Soviet Union into Russia. To this day most Germans have no awareness of the fact that the Nazis killed millions of Ukrainian civilians and devastated their country.

Ironically, many artists, writers and musicians who have fled Ukraine have found refuge in Germany. One example is the composer Valentin Silvestrov, who fled to Berlin aged 84 with one suitcase, full of his manuscripts. Once there, he discovered that Ukrainian music was unknown in Germany. Now that Silvestrov’s works are being performed, including at the Proms in London, the Germans are slowly waking up to the presence of a greater living composer than any of their own.

Many ordinary Germans, like the British, instinctively warm to the Ukrainian cause. The difference is in leadership – or lack of it. Chancellor Olaf Scholz, unlike Boris Johnson or Liz Truss, has shown only lukewarm support for Kyiv and has been implicitly rebuked by President Zelensky.

Hamburger grilled

Although there is no suggestion that Scholz has been bribed to go easy on Russia, he himself has become embroiled in a corruption scandal. He is accused of helping M.M. Warburg & Co, Germany’s oldest and largest private bank, to avoid a €47 million fine in 2016, during his time as Finance Minister in the Merkel coalition.

The Hamburg-based bank is alleged to have made up to €300 million in a capital gains tax scam which came to light while Scholz was also mayor of the city state. Just as he finds himself facing an unexpectedly grim present and a positively terrifying future, his provincial past has returned to haunt him.

Last week the Chancellor was grilled by a committee of inquiry in Hamburg. The normally meticulous Scholz claimed not to remember any details about his meetings with Warburg’s former chief, Christian Olearius, who has now been charged with tax evasion. Germany’s safe pair of hands, whom millions had entrusted with the nation’s finances, is now accused of being cosy with tax-dodging bankers and being an unimpressive, even unreliable, witness.

In other ways, too, Scholz is failing to live up to the moral example set by the two great Social Democratic Chancellors of post-war Germany, Willy Brandt and Helmut Schmidt. At a joint press conference with Mahmoud Abbas in Berlin earlier this month, Scholz remained tight-lipped while the Palestinian leader delivered an anti-Semitic tirade, accusing Israel of committing “many Holocausts” against his people.

Schmidt, who concealed the fact he had a Jewish grandfather from the Nazis but as Chancellor was an outspoken philosemite, would not have been impressed by his fellow Hamburger Scholz. Nor would Brandt, who famously fell to his knees at the memorial to the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising.

Not for decades has anti-Semitism been such a threat in Germany: in July, Berlin’s Holocaust Memorial was desecrated with swastikas. Now, as Putin’s myrmidons massacre and deport Ukrainians near the site of Nazi genocide, while a quarter of the Russian Jewish population has emigrated in anticipation of pogroms, Germany needs a leader who is not afraid to denounce anti-Semitism even at the cost of diplomatic niceties.

After less than a year in office, Scholz’s personal ratings are plumbing depths never seen during Mrs Merkel’s 16 years at the helm. As Germans brace themselves for unprecedented hardships in peacetime, they are led by a weak and indecisive Chancellor at the head of a fragile three-party coalition.

Post-heroic, post-patriotic

Wednesday’s visit to Kyiv by Boris Johnson – his third – to mark Ukraine’s Independence Day was hugely appreciated not only by Volodymyr Zelensky but by all Ukrainians. Yet it was a gesture of solidarity that did not occur – could not have occurred – to Olaf Scholz.

The German Chancellor’s only visit to the Ukrainian capital last June, accompanied by Emmanuel Macron and Mario Draghi, was an awkward, chilly affair that yielded little more than promises. This week, Scholz posted a short video message, concluding: “Our hearts are with you.” Ulrich Speck, a German foreign policy analyst, commented: “Hearts, yes. But not weapons.”

Johnson, by contrast, knows he is among friends in Kyiv – a friendship symbolised by Zelensky awarding him Ukraine’s highest honour, the Order of Liberty. It is impossible to imagine the lugubrious German Chancellor finding the Prime Minister’s pithy words: “While people [in the West] are paying energy bills, people in Ukraine are paying with blood.” Nor would Scholz echo him in declaring: “I believe Ukraine can and will win this war.”

For his part, Zelensky told his people that they had been “reborn” in the heat of war. “We used to say: ‘Peace’. Now we say: ‘Victory’,” he declared.

Highly educated Germans find it hard to empathise with such Churchillian sentiments. Jürgen Habermas, the eminence grise of German intellectuals, makes condescending comments about Ukraine as a primitive place, still captive to the nationalist illusions of the last century, unlike more sophisticated, “post-heroic” Germany. It doesn’t occur to the 93-year-old philosopher that without the heroism of its soldiers and civilians, Ukraine would by now have ceased to exist.

Prussian military prowess has long since given way to post-patriotic pusillanimity. Where Merkel and Scholz feared to tread and even Biden was hesitant, Johnson was the first to commit himself wholeheartedly to the cause and to visit war-torn Kyiv.

Many other nations – the Poles, the Baltic states, the Scandinavians and the Canadians among them – have been more supportive than the Germans, who owe Ukrainians the greatest moral debt.

Berlin boasts of handing out a handful of howitzers while dithering over clapped-out armoured vehicles. Meanwhile British arms and training, Turkish drones and American rocket artillery systems have proved decisive on the battlefield.

Sold down the Dnieper

Although the Scholz coalition officially sides with Ukraine, the unpalatable fact remains that Germany and its EU partners are financing Russian aggression by paying vast sums for Russian gas.

Will they stand up to Putin in Germany when the enormity of the ordeal ahead becomes clear to everybody? Will public opinion continue to back even the present feeble commitment, or will the voices calling for peace at the expense of Ukrainians prevail? It is all too believable that at some point, probably early next year when gas storage facilities are empty, Berlin – and Brussels – will open negotiations with the Kremlin, regardless of Kyiv’s wishes.

Yet it is then that the ghosts of the past may rise up to intervene in the present. The thought of Germans and Russians redrawing the map of Eastern Europe at the conference table sends shivers down the spines of every Pole, Lithuanian, Latvian, Estonian and, of course, Ukrainian. On August 23, 1940, exactly 82 years ago this week, the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact was signed, carving up Poland (which then included Lviv and other parts of present-day Ukraine) and the Baltic states between Russia and Germany. No German Chancellor wishes to be reminded of that precedent.

However, nor can Scholz risk presiding over an even deeper and more lasting recession than that caused by the Covid pandemic. Somehow he must steer a course between the Scylla of appeasing Putin and the Charybdis of economic ruin.

The tension between these positions is reflected in the tripartite coalition. Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock and the Greens are the hawks, Finance Minister Christian Lindner and his pro-business Free Democrats are the doves, while the Social Democrats are deeply divided. The party leadership leans towards Moscow, the rank and file towards Kyiv. This explains why Scholz never says that he wants Ukraine to win the war, merely that they must not lose it.

The opposition Christian Democrats are only slightly more united. They too have a large wing that privately favours a negotiated peace, represented by their pro-business leader Friedrich Merz, and a smaller but not insignificant group led by the foreign affairs expert Norbert Röntgen, who hope for a Ukrainian victory. Merz has papered over the cracks by focusing on a campaign to reverse his predecessor Mrs Merkel’s exit from nuclear energy.

Meanwhile, the “understanding Putin” lobby has the support of both the hard Left Die Linke and anti-immigration AfD parties. German public opinion has slowly tiptoed away from its initial admiration for Ukrainian resistance and towards a compromise peace.

That subtle shift could soon become an overwhelming tide, once Germans are required to make real sacrifices. Vladimir Putin, we may be sure, is counting on it.

From October, Scholz will impose a gas levy on consumers to compensate energy companies for the cost of replacing Russian gas supplies. Germany’s biggest energy company, Uniper, was bailed out in July to the tune of £12.5 billion; it is now claiming another £18.5 billion of levies.

This policy is bound to be unpopular, since it redistributes tens of billions from the poor to the rich — curious thinking for a government of the Left. But this is nothing compared to the prospect of protests sparked by a national shutdown caused, not by a deadly virus, but by Putin’s energy politics.

A change in the air?

Modern Germany has a volatile history of popular protest. It began with the revolution that toppled the Kaiser in 1918. The Nazis mobilised the masses to carry out their “national revolution” in 1933. A workers’ uprising in East Germany was crushed by Soviet tanks in 1953. Student protests brought about a cultural revolution in 1968. Uniquely bloodless and benign was the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989. This was Germany’s finest hour.

The defiance that breached the Wall and sent the Soviet army home was a blessing, but the despair that Putin’s revenge may induce this winter will surely be a curse. Gas has given the Russian dictator coercive control over the German political class, which willingly acquiesced in its fate.

In Kyiv, Boris Johnson said: “I can tell you that we in the UK will not for one second give in to Putin’s blackmail.” Olaf Scholz is incapable of speaking like this — because he does not believe it. He has failed to frame the coming ordeal as a battle in which Germans must make sacrifices for their own liberty, not just Ukraine’s. People don’t mind his lack of charisma; they do mind facing a nightmarish winter with spineless hypocrisy at the helm.

Will it become so obvious by next spring that Scholz is unequal to the task that either he or his coalition are replaced? Can the centre of German politics hold — or are we about to see a terrible revolt of the masses against a discredited political establishment? It has happened before. It can happen again.

Daniel Johnson was the Telegraph’s correspondent in Germany and Eastern Europe in the late 1980s. He is now the editor of TheArticle.

"Russia turned off supplies of gas in response to the backlash over Moscow's invasion of Ukraine."

"Well, it relies on Russia for 55 per cent of its gas imports, and that’s more than many other countries in Europe."

"So it has been able to diversify."

"So it’s in a bit of a bind, really."

"The greens keep saying that because the price of wind and solar is now as cheap as, or cheaper than, fossil fuels, they’ve won the energy war."

"Germany's upper house of parliament approved measures aimed at helping people hit hard by high energy prices and the high cost of living."