Energy & CivilizationStudent Project Showcase: Fall 2022

Group Members

Natasha Siapno, Nathan He, Titanium Wang

Problem Identification Video

Project Report

Executive Summary

As Germany heads into the Winter season, they face an energy crisis on an unprecedented scale. Following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the European Union has been effectively cut off from Russian natural gas supplies, leaving countries like Germany especially vulnerable. With Russian natural gas accounting for 15% of its total energy mix (Clean Energy Wire), Germany has been left scrambling to find a solution. Facing this crisis, Germany is being forced to rethink their energy mix over the next five years with the goal of increasing the proportion of domestic, cost-effective, environmentally-friendly energy in their mix.

On top of the war in Ukraine, there are a number of other factors that have contributed to the present dilemma. One critical event is the 2011 Fukushima disaster, which caused the public to strongly fear that a similar tragedy would befall Germany. Over 200,000 citizens (Reuters) took to the streets in the largest anti-nuclear protest in German history, calling on the government to shut down all nuclear reactors. The state obliged, announcing plans to phase out all nuclear energy by 2022. In 2011, nuclear energy satisfied 22.2% of Germany’s electricity demand, but today that number is down to 5.6% (Clean Energy Wire). Furthermore, a study found that the lost electricity production has been primarily replaced by coal-fired production and net electricity imports, increasing both pollution and reliance on foreign energy (Haas).

There are also social and legal barriers to domestic natural gas production, a cheap, relatively clean source of energy. Here, it is important to mention that Russia has invested $95 million in anti-fracking NGOs and actively proliferates anti-fracking rhetoric, which NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen argues is a ploy to increase European dependence on Russian natural gas (The Critic). This tactic seems to be working — commercial fracking is banned in Germany (DW), forcing the state to rely heavily on imports, over half of which come from Russia. Furthermore, even if fracking were legal, there still exists the issue of mineral rights. Unlike in jurisdictions such as the United States where subsurface mineral rights belong to the party who owns the land, in Germany these mineral rights belong to the state (Springer). Companies drilling for natural gas would therefore have to pay royalties on the gas they produce, strongly disincentivizing domestic natural gas production.

International politics further play a role in shaping this crisis and its potential solutions. For one, Germany has yet to meet its climate goals of 65% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions by 2030 and full carbon neutrality by 2045. In 2021, emissions actually rose by 4.5% due to the use of coal to meet increasing demand for electricity (Bloomberg). Furthermore, Germany is facing criticism from members of the European Union for its reversion to unclean energy sources. As a country with access to technological and financial capital, they argue, Germany should be investing in more expensive but less polluting sources of energy to free up carbon space for developing countries.

Final Paper: Bringing Back Nuclear and Natural Gas: Two Potential Solutions to Germany’s Energy Crisis