Germany’s nuclear plant operators may get one billion euro in compensation for 2011 policy change

The German government plans to compensate operators of the country’s nuclear power plants with about one billion euros for the nuclear policy U-turn in 2011, Malte Kreutzfeldt writes in the tageszeitung (taz). The nuclear power companies had sued because they said they lost potential revenue as a consequence of the decision of Chancellor Angela Merkel’s government in the wake of the nuclear incident in Fukushima to speed up the phase-out of nuclear power again.  Merkel’s decision came just months after her government prolonged the plants’ remaining lifetime the companies negotiated with the government of her predecessor, Gerhard Schröder. Germany’s Federal Constitutional Court ruled in 2016 that the accelerated nuclear exit had been lawful in principle but ordered that the companies be compensated for some of the revenue lost due to the change in policy. The nuclear companies initially demanded about 19 billion euro in compensation. But the German environment ministry (BMU), which is tasked with settling the issue, says the plant operators are more likely to receive a sum “somewhere in the range below one billion euro”, Kreutzfeldt writes. The draft of the necessary changes to the law has been sent to the other ministries. The court has set a 30 June deadline to fix the issue.

Find the article in German here.

See the CLEW article Germany's constitutional court backs speedy nuclear exit and the CLEW dossier The challenges of Germany’s nuclear phase-out for background.