By Felix Rupprecht
Not only green electricity! Germany imports more electricity from abroad than ever! And of that, 21 percent is still from nuclear power and almost 30 percent from coal, gas, etc.
“Every year there are phases in which we buy electricity from other countries,” answered Federal Chancellor Olaf Scholz (65, SPD) in July when asked why Germany was replacing nuclear power with imported electricity.
It sounded as if nothing had changed as a result of the shutdown of the nuclear power plant compared to previous years.
But the opposite is the case. Germany imports more electricity than ever: According to the Federal Network Agency, it was 6505 gigawatt hours in August – a record! Germany has never bought so much electricity from abroad.
Germany pays more than half a billion
And that has its price: 557 million euros is the export balance that Germany had to pay to its EU neighbors in cross-border electricity trading in August (causes: more imports than exports, higher import than export prices).
Economics Grimm: “Annoying for the mood in Europe”
Top economist Veronika Grimm (51) said to BILD: “The point of the European electricity market is that you help each other and use the cheapest electricity that is available.” In this respect, there is nothing wrong with it.
BUT: “Of course, the nuclear shutdown has increased the need for electricity imports. Our study last year showed that the shutdown is likely to result in a price increase of eight to twelve percent and that the price in neighboring countries will also increase.”
This unnecessary shortage of supply is “annoying for the mood in Europe”.
21 percent nuclear power
This is how our import stream is produced:
► 21 percent nuclear power,
▶︎ 46 percent conventional energy sources,
► 51 percent renewable energy.
Do we consume more nuclear power than before the nuclear power plant?
Germany imported 6505 gigawatt hours (GWh) in August. A total of around 33,000 GWh of electricity was consumed in Germany in August.
That means we have an import quota of a whopping 20 percent.
Exciting: Of the imported quantity, 21 percent was obtained from nuclear power (1365 GWh). Nuclear power therefore accounts for more than four percent of the total electricity consumption. That is more than in the months before the nuclear power plant shut down (2.5%).