Since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and the sabotage of gas pipelines in the Baltic Sea, Germany has quickly phased out the cheap Russian natural gas. The gas was the energy source that the country had largely depended on as a replacement for the scrapped nuclear power.
This has forced Germany to burn more coal again. Without nuclear power, on dark and windless days, electricity prices have risen sharply.
– Now during the winter, when there is darkness, the prices are very high because we in Europe are interconnected, which is also noticeable in Sweden. But on the other hand, no cheers are heard when the sun is shining brightly, the wind is blowing and the prices are particularly low, she says.
After Fukushima
SVT: This is seen as a bad part of your legacy. Angela Merkel, was it really a wise decision?
– I think that, after the nuclear accident in Fukushima, it was the right decision, at least for Germany, she says.
Already at the beginning of the 2000s, before Merkel’s time as chancellor, the then red-green German government made the decision to start phasing out nuclear power. After the nuclear accident in Japan in 2011, Merkel’s government decided to accelerate the closure of the German reactors.