“How the coal fund outperforms the nuclear fund”

Germany’s nuclear fund is meant to cover the costs accruing from the country’s nuclear phase-out for generations to come. If – and only if - the fund is managed well, taxpayers will not have to top it up, Helmut Bünder and Brigitte Koch write in Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung. Germany’s RAG Foundation, created ten years ago, is already successfully doing the same thing for hard coal mining in the country’s west, they write. The fund’s budget has increased from around six billion euros at the outset to almost 17 billion euros today, and it is expected to easily cover the 220 million euros annually projected to cushion the economic impact in western Germany’s hard coal regions, they say. The last mines are slated for closure in 2019.

See the CLEW interview “There’s no way around a coal exit law” for background.