Climate protection, energy security, and Germany’s policy of ecological modernisation

Abstract

The interplay between climate protection and energy security issues in Germany is examined using an ecological modernisation (EM) framework. The central concerns are with the country’s policy response to energy security and climate problems, and how this shapes Germany’s international aspirations. Since Germany’s conventional energy mix is simultaneously ‘dirty’ and import intensive, the answer to both challenges lies in ‘greening’ the energy system, i.e. reducing demand through energy efficiency and basing energy supply on domestically available renewables. Thus, energy security goes hand in hand with climate protection. As for Germany’s international aspirations, energy transformation is economically and ecologically feasible only if accompanied by comparable efforts internationally. Besides helping climate protection, international eco-policies lead to an economic level playing field so that (energy-intensive) losers have less reason to resist EM and environmental industries benefit. Germany, therefore, remains a strong proponent of international climate policies.

Keywords:

• ecological modernisation
• climate protection
• energy security
• transformation of energy system
• German renewable energy policy

Acknowledgements

I gratefully acknowledge the help of the anonymous reviewers as well as Deema Kaneff, Lydia Scholz, and David Toke, and the German Academic Exchange Service, which funded my post as DAAD Lecturer of Political Economy at the University of Birmingham from 2008 to 2011, during which time the first draft was developed.

Notes

^1. For critical accounts of EM theory see, e.g., Mol (1995), Hajer (1995), Christoff (1996), Buttel (2000), Seippel (2000), Berger et al. (2001), York and Rosa (2003), and Toke (2011).

^2. Wurzel (2010) argues ‘that ecological industrial policy constitutes an extension and refinement of the above-mentioned concept of ecological modernisation’ although it has a ‘stronger social democratic flavour’ (p. 471). For Jänicke (2010), the renaming was ‘primarily a semantic change’ (p. 134).

^3. Creation of jobs in the renewables sector is not to be confused with the net employment effect of renewables promotion. The latter has to take into account the number of jobs lost due to relatively higher electricity costs.

^4. Only recently, a discussion emerged concerning the security of electricity supply (e.g. Vorholz 2012, p. 33). Hitherto, this was of no concern, given the high reliability and sufficient provision of installed domestic production capacities.

^5. The issue of national champions in energy markets came to the fore in 2006, when several attempted foreign take-overs within the EU single market were impaired by governments, e.g., the take-over battle between the German supplier E.ON and the Spanish Endesa (Harks and Pointvogl 2007, p. 4).

^6. Government emphasises that the energy concept contains a ‘long-term overall strategy for the period up to the year 2050’ and aims at providing ‘long-term orientation while at the same time preserving the flexibility required for new technical and economic developments’ (BMWI and BMU 2010, p. 3).

^7. The positive impact on prices is because nuclear power stations are already written off so that only operational costs remain, amounting to 4–6 cent per kWh. However, this calculation does not include significant external costs for liability in case of a maximum credible accident and for final storage of nuclear waste (Peterson 2011, p. 224).

^8. In principle, the government’s approach to competitive energy prices is based on the idea that competition in a liberalised energy market leads to competitive prices. Therefore, at least on paper, the government is committed to liberalisation of energy markets. However, since energy prices in Germany are determined to a large extent by taxes and fees, the price effect of policy measures is also significant.

^9. According to background research for the energy concept (EWI et al. 2010, p. 14), economic benefits from the system transformation can be expected after 2030 when international energy prices will have increased significantly due to higher global demand. By then, Germany will have partly decoupled from international energy markets.

^10. I thank an anonymous reviewer for making this point.