Environmentalism and Nuclear Power: Anglo-German Comparison

Abstract

The paper deals with the impacts of emission reduction targets on fuel policy for electricity, and vice versa. It does so by comparing policy responses in two different institutional contexts. Supportive links were created, in Germany, between the reduction of acid emissions from power stations and the protection of nuclear power. This higher cost option was justified to an ‘aware’ public on environmental grounds. Politically this required a tacit alliance between coal-based and nuclear industries realising that the well-being of both depended on public support, the common challenge being fossil fuel suppliers in world markets. Cooperation with the State was therefore desirable and, in Germany, available. The British story is very different and not without irony. Similarities between the energy politics of acid rain and the global warming/climate change debate are explored. It is concluded that institutions and linkages between them matter very much.