Germans pay the price for renewable energy

It has been over a year since German Chancellor Angela Merkel set the goal of a nuclear-free future for Germany by 2022. The widespread adoption of renewable energy, however, has left consumers bearing the burden of the changes. Some bills in Germany could even go up by 47 percent. Al Jazeera's Nick Spicer reports from Berlin.

• Category

  News & Politics

[yannametz]

German here - happy with green energy choice. There is a price tag associated to moving to a completely new electric source - happy to pay for it. Let's see how France will do when they'll have to disassemble/rebuild all those old nuclear reactors. What other alternatives are there - oil?

[El Nikolo]

I'm from germany and this report is partly not correct. The rising prices have --nothing-- to do with the adoption of renewable energy. It's mainly politics who give the energy-business the opportunity to make money, so they won't come up with red numbers... One example: The CDU-lead-government is blocking a energy-transfer-line to norwegia for years. The norwegians want to sell their very very cheap water-driven-energy to us, but can't - because that would lower income of the old players....

[darthvader5300]

Russia already has an on line BREST nuclear reactor power plant that simultaneously consumes both it's initial start up fuel and nuclear wastes while reproducing and recycling new replacement nuclear fuel indefinitely. It is, as of this moment, producing electricity & desalinated fresh water, passively molten lead convection cooled, uses PU-329 nitride fuel, and SAFE since it uses hafnium carbide control rods & containment liners that remains a hard and strong solid at 7.500 degrees Fahrenheit!

[pqxxedf]

Currently, France is selling Germany energy from their nuclear power plants... they're doing pretty well

[pqxxedf]

hopefully you are aware that nuclear power is a ZERO GREENHOUSE GAS EMISSIONS source of energy

[pqxxedf]

"I personally know someone high up at the DOE and...there isn't even enough uranium/plutonium on this plant...we will run out by 2050 from internal estimates"

lol

And I'm a rich ninja stud...

[pqxxedf]

Shutting down efficient, already bought and paid for, ZERO GREENHOUSE GAS EMISSIONS nuclear power plants has nothing to do with your rising energy bills? And the cow jumped over the moon, and the dish ran away with the spoon...

[hazemvirus]

No, I do believe in green energy that will make our lives better, but we are doing the opposite of what i just said, we are paying way too much to do that conversion. The electricity bill jumped over %200 in the past 20 years if not more than that.

[1Pantikian]

Yes, giant cows... and add to that more and stronger hurricanes, droughts, desertification, increased range for tropical parasites and diseases (due to tropical climate stretching northward), and biome shifts. Giant cows may be nice, but the rest is a real pain in the ass.

[SchwarzundWeis]

Not true. There is a cable project going on to acess the Norwegian energy market for Germany.

Ist schon aktiv im Bau der Plan

[politicalchanel]

that is absolutely awful, a dreadful nightmare; I want to live on a planet where nature takes its course not where everything, even the weather is engineered by humans to make life easier for themselves; you can be prosperous and live in the cold just look at the scandinavian countries; it is nature's course that co2 levels and hence temperatures were much higher during the Mesozoic era and much lower nowadays;