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Fraunhofer ISE balance sheet: One year without nuclear power - renewables expanded, fossils displaced
On April 15, 2023, with the shutdown of the last three nuclear power plants Emsland, Neckarwestheim, and Isar, the era of nuclear power ended in Germany. On the first anniversary of the phase-out, the Fraunhofer Institute for Solar Energy Systems ISE presented a positive balance. Nuclear power was energetically replaced by the increased generation from renewable energies. The generation from fossil fuels also decreased, which was compensated by electricity savings, self-generated electricity from photovoltaics, a reduced load, and imports. Electricity prices fell to the level of 2021.
The basis of the evaluation is the data platform energy-charts.info. In the last operating year from 16.04.2022 to 15.04.2023, the German nuclear power plants produced 29.5 TWh of electricity and provided 6.3 percent of the public net electricity generation. Even after their shutdown, nuclear power continues to spark discussions. For example, faced with increased electricity imports in the summer of 2023, it was claimed that Germany had become an electricity importer, or that nuclear power had been replaced by coal.
"In fact, the electricity generation from nuclear power was energetically replaced by renewable energies. In the first year without nuclear energy, approximately 270 TWh of renewable electricity was generated, 33 TWh more than in the previous year. Our electricity mix is cleaner than ever before," explains Prof. Bruno Burger, who is responsible for the data platform energy-charts.info at Fraunhofer ISE.
Renewable energies had a share of 58.8 percent of the electrical load between April 2023 and April 2024. This is the sum of public electricity consumption and network losses.
Decline in Fossil Energies and Load
In parallel with the increased generation from renewables, electricity generation from fossil fuels has declined. In the first year without nuclear energy, approximately 154.4 TWh of electricity was generated from coal, natural gas, oil, and waste. This is significantly below the figures of previous years and 26 percent below the previous year. Their share of the public net electricity generation fell to 33.7 percent. Reasons for this include, among others, the high prices for natural gas and hard coal and the high costs of CO2 certificates.
The load has also decreased by 2.1 percent to 459 TWh. The reasons for this are varied: electricity savings in the industrial and private sectors, a decline in production, and higher self-consumption of photovoltaic electricity. Cheaper imported electricity in summer Imports have increased in the first year without nuclear power plants, although Germany had sufficient power plant capacity to supply itself at any time. Against a load of about 75 GW, Germany has about 90 GW of non-fluctuating generation capacities. In addition, there are the renewable generators Solar (approx. 85 GW) and Wind (approx. 70 GW) and the pumped storage (approx. 9.5 GW).
»The fact that we imported 23 terawatt-hours of electricity compared to 21.3 terawatt-hours of exports in the previous year is not due to a lack of generation capacity in Germany. The reason is the significantly fallen electricity exchange prices. In the summer, renewable power plants in the Alps and in Denmark, Norway, and Sweden produced inexpensive electricity, making German coal-fired power plants non-competitive. As a result, a lot of electricity with low greenhouse gas emissions also came to Germany through imports,« explains Prof. Burger. In addition, in the summer, many nuclear power plants in France, after outages in 2022, were back online and exporting surplus electricity.
Electricity exchange prices further declining
Exchange electricity prices (Day-Ahead) have fallen to the level of April 2021, thus lower than before the Ukraine war. The average monthly Day-Ahead electricity exchange price in April 2024 is 48.39 euros/MWh or 4.8 cents/kWh. Household electricity prices have also recovered and are at the level of June 4, 2021, for new customers. The evaluation of the period mid-April 2023 to mid-April 2024 shows that the phasing out of nuclear power in Germany could be well compensated. Contrary to claims, the increase in imports was not due to a lack of generation capacities in Germany, but to the cheap generation prices of renewable power plants in the Alps and Scandinavia.
Translated automatically from German.
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