Germany

In Germany the Green movement was much stronger than in the US. The result was a contradiction. They wanted carbon free energy but chose to shut down nuclear power. A contradictory approach? Germany wants to curb greenhouse gas emissions but at the same time will shut down all of its nuclear power stations, which in the year 2000 had a 29.5 per cent share of the power generation mix. In 2020 the share was down to 11.4 percent, and by 2022 all nuclear plants are going to be shut down. The transition away from fossil fuels cannot be accomplished in time without a severe economic problem so they had to rely on natural gas during the interim and this left them dependent on Russia. They are now trying to replace Russian natural gas with American gas but they do not have enough unloading facilities since US gas comes by sea using liquefied gas vs pipeline gas from Russian. Political pressure from the Greens here in the US is sending the country down the same path. One difference is that the US had enough sense not to start shutting down nuclear plants although many Green groups were pushing that.