BAVARIANS ARE proud of being Germany’s number one: they have the best standard of living, the best beer, the strongest economy and, year after year, Bavaria comes out top as the place most Germans would like to live.
Now Bavarians want to be the first in Germany to bring down the curtain on nuclear energy.
The state’s ruling Christian Social Union (CSU) announced plans yesterday for a nuclear shutdown by 2022.
Once a staunchly pro-nuclear party, the plan reflects a policy shift in the CSU’s big sister party, Chancellor Angela Merkel’s Christian Democrats (CDU), after the Fukushima disaster.
Days after the Japanese tsunami, Dr Merkel distanced herself from the CDU’s decades-old pro-nuclear stance and abandoned her six-month-old plan to extend the life of German nuclear plants.
Instead she ordered the temporary shutdown of eight older nuclear plants that are unlikely to return to the grid. The future of Germany’s nine remaining plants is being debated in Berlin, with shutdown legislation expected in early July.
While Berlin talks, the CSU promised a total shutdown in Bavaria in 11 years.
It is an ambitious target: while Germany draws around 30 per cent of its energy from nuclear plants, Bavaria’s nuclear energy dependency is twice that.
The CSU’s new nuclear ambitions reflect the party’s desperation to boost its profile in Berlin.
At the same time it hopes to win back young urban voters by capitalising on the revival in German nuclear scepticism. “Only when we achieve clarity [on nuclear energy] will there be investment in renewable energy,” said CSU leader Horst Seehofer yesterday.
Half a century after Bavaria pioneered nuclear energy in Germany, Mr Seehofer predicts a swift shift to renewables will give a “huge boost” to Bavaria’s already booming high-tech economy.
By outdoing even Dr Merkel’s nuclear U-turn, the CSU leader hopes to open his coalition options in Bavaria to the Green Party, or at least steal back some of their voters.
Mr Seehofer’s only problem is that he wasn’t the first in the CSU to spot the Fukushima opportunity. That was Markus Söder, the Bavarian environment minister. Last year Mr Söder attacked nuclear energy opponents, joking that “they shouldn’t be surprised to wake up and find a minarette in their back garden”.
Hours after the Japanese earthquake and tsunami, he announced: “Japan changes everything.” Bavarians should become post-nuclear energy pioneers with their own “citizen windmills” in their gardens.
Mr Söder was already enjoying a revival in his political fortunes after his main CSU rival, KarlTheodor zu Guttenberg, resigned as federal defence minister and quit politics after plagiarising sections of his doctoral thesis.
Now as unchallenged CSU heir apparent, Mr Söder has shut down one ageing nuclear plant and wants others to follow. The swift pace has left senior party figures concerned. As one put it yesterday, the CSU’s core, deeply conservative voters, might not take kindly to hurried efforts to “give the CSU a lick of green paint”.