By Vijay Jayaraj
German Chancellor Friedrich Merz has called the nuclear phaseout a “serious strategic mistake” that left Germany short of firm power that turned the Energiewende into the most expensive energy transition on the planet. This is an early marker for a developing worldwide retreat from policies that sidelined nuclear power and demonized coal, oil, and natural gas.
German and Japanese Nuclear Embarrassment
Germany stubbornly closed its last three functioning nuclear reactors in April 2023 right in the middle of a crippling energy crisis triggered by the war in Ukraine. As pragmatists predicted, German citizens now suffer under punishingly high electricity prices and remain heavily dependent on imported energy.
The green dream was sold as a route to “cheap” renewables, yet the reality for German households and factories has been record‑high electricity prices, complex subsidies for favored businesses and individuals who conform to the climate narrative, and a grid that struggles on windless days or under gray skies.
Japan made a remarkably similar error but is finally correcting course. After the Fukushima disaster, the government panicked and shut down all 54 of its nuclear reactors. Today, Japan is slowly restarting those idle units.
The pattern is plain to see. Countries abandon dependable power sources under political pressure, then spend years rebuilding what they had demonized and dismantled.
Regret Over Abandoning Fossil Fuels
This is why I anticipate a cascade of similar reversals by national leaders who participated in a destructive campaign that stripped grids of dependable, affordable, and abundant coal, oil, and natural gas.
Politicians are already quietly hitting the brakes on their aggressive fossil fuel phaseouts when reality bites. The massive Groningen gas field was scheduled for permanent closure due to localized earthquake risks. Yet in 2024, the Dutch Senate delayed the final shutdown vote when lawmakers demanded guarantees that abandoning the domestic resource would not jeopardize energy security.
Within a week of the German chancellor’s admission of a nuclear energy fiasco, the country’s energy minister lamented at an oil and gas conference the push of net zero policies, indirectly referencing the abandonment of fossil fuels.
In the United States, President Donald Trump took executive actions aimed at preventing some coal plants from closing, including orders that kept aging facilities like the J.H. Campbell plant in Michigan running to “avoid summer blackouts.”
South Africa’s Mineral Resources and Energy Minister Gwede Mantashe consistently fights international pressure to quickly abandon coal. “You don’t destroy what you have on the basis of hope that something better is coming,” he says. Mantashe rightly insists that protecting the ability of the state to supply energy must remain a priority.
India offers the most powerful example of this energy pragmatism. The country has signaled that coal will remain the backbone of the economy for decades, even as its diplomats make empty promises about reaching net-zero by 2070. Deputy Power Minister Shripad Naik recently revealed that India had added a massive 7.2 gigawatts of new coal capacity in the 2025–26 fiscal year alone and would add 307 gigawatts of total coal capacity by 2035.
A majority of Western countries, especially in Europe, utterly lack this basic foresight on energy security. Many countries have locked in policies that tear down coal, oil, gas, and nuclear plants before they have built credible alternatives. They chase targets for emissions reductions. They downplay the costs to their citizens.
Energy security has become more prominent in the news because of turmoil in the Middle East. Yet a war may not be needed to launch the next generation of energy crises. When the next prolonged cold spell, drought, or demand surge hits, the weakness of the anti-fossil fuel approach will show up in higher bills, rolling blackouts, and public anger.
Merz’s nuclear confession suggests that the political class cannot keep dodging reality forever.
Originally published on PJ Media on May 11, 2026.
Vijay Jayaraj is a Science and Research Associate at the CO2 Coalition, Fairfax, Virginia. He holds an M.S. in environmental sciences from the University of East Anglia and a postgraduate degree in energy management from Robert Gordon University, both in the U.K., and a bachelor’s in engineering from Anna University, India. He served as a research associate with the Changing Oceans Research Unit at University of British Columbia, Canada.
It might still take pitchforks and torches.
November 5 is will be coming up later this year. Plenty of time to amass pitchfork, material for torches and lots of hemp rope.
I know exactly what you mean, but the vile phony-leftist, grifterpigs want people to show their anger with violence to the point where they can use it against them. So much so that they provoked the fedsurrection on Jan 6th.
For the London March on Saturday, the police and the marchers are on the same team:
I’m thinking we need to take them out like we used to do with fraudsters, tar and feathers.
“The green dream was sold as a route to “cheap” renewables, yet the reality for German households and factories has been record‑high electricity prices, complex subsidies for favored businesses and individuals who conform to the climate narrative, and a grid that struggles on windless days or under gray skies.”
“The pattern is plain to see. Countries abandon dependable power sources under political pressure, then spend years rebuilding what they had demonized and dismantled.”
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Voters pay a dear price when they elect scientific illiterates to high public office. And what makes matters worse is when the environmental movement has much more political clout than it arguably should have. This gives the politicians little choice but to jump when the environmentalists bark.
President Trump appears to understand that wind turbines and solar panels don’t cut it as alternatives to fossil fuels and nuclear power, but unfortunately the damage had already been done before he started his second term. I dread to think what will happen if the Democrats regain control of the White House and Congress in 2028. The worst may be yet to come.
I say this again: It must be frustrating when energy companies have to keep going back and forth between Republican and Democratic Party energy policies. But I guess as long as they are making money, they can live with it.
It doesn’t matter at all to them that they’re scientific illiterates, as they can rely on the cover of their useful idiot scientific illiterates, like the ones who come on here with 12th-rate credentials. They only care about which kid or numbskull will give them a vote as in, yeah fraud Miliband, what a brilliant idea it is to pretend to make planet earth a bit cooler. They brought in all the muslims to vote for them and then they voted against them. Talk about useless cretins.
One can elect a scientific illiterate under one condition. That public official makes no decisions based on science and has appropriately educated and credential advisors to make the call.
Otherwise, spot on.
Europe’s Energiewende Is Unraveling
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Since 1990, Europe, which lacks fossil fuels and all sorts of materials, including rare earths, has played a leading role in shaping global climate policy, highlighted by the launch of the European Green Deal in 2019—Ursula von der Leyen described it as a “man on the moon moment.”
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The initiative was aiming to make Europe the world’s first climate-neutral continent by 2050 while fostering innovation and strengthening its industrial base.
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Europe was also more or less forcing the rest of the world to go with wind, solar, batteries, biofuels, EVs and Heat Pumps.
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Europe’s elites saw themselves as the “climate leaders”, and saw it as a big opportunity to expand its wind, solar, etc., systems to the rest of the world and make lots of money in the process, a new way to colonize the world and extract wealth from it.
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The Results are Deeply Disappointing
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Instead of meeting its goals, the Green Deal is increasingly associated with higher energy costs, weakened competitiveness, and growing political backlash. .It has deepened divisions within the EU, strained global relations, and increased pressure on households and businesses—raising serious doubts about its feasibility and long-term economic impact..
The main problem of wind and solar are the hidden costs.
Hidden Costs: At a future 30% W/S annual penetration on the grid, based on UK and German experience:
– Onshore grid expansion/reinforcement to connect far-flung W/S systems, about 2 c/kWh
– A fleet of traditional power plants to quickly counteract W/S variable output, on a less than minute-by-minute basis, 24/7/365, which means more Btu/kWh, more CO2/kWh, more cost of about 2 c/kWh
– A fleet of traditional power plants to provide electricity during 1) low-wind periods, 2) high-wind periods, when rotors are locked in place, and 3) low solar periods during mornings, evenings, at night, snow/ice on panels, which means more Btu/kWh, more CO2/kWh, more cost of about 2 c/kWh
– Pay W/S system Owners for electricity they could have produced, if no curtailment, about 1 c/kWh
– Importing electricity at high prices, when W/S output is low, 1 c/kWh
– Exporting electricity at low prices, when W/S output is high, 1 c/kWh
– Disassembly on land and at sea, reprocessing and storing at hazardous waste sites, about 2 c/kWh
Total: 2 + 2 + 2 + 1 + 1 + 1 + 2 = 11 c/kWh. This cost is rarely talked about, but shows up in many ways.
“The political class cannot keep dodging reality forever.” But as the UK’s Miliband and the US ‘squad’ show, they can sure try.
So, they finally came to the conclusion that they’ve been scammed. Big time. It was always the “plan” and they chose to align with the scammers and are now paying the price.
As it has been said many times, they only learn the had way.
Those that fail to learn from, or ignore, or rewrite the lessons of history are doomed to repeat the mistakes.
This will happen again and again and again.
They put the dumm in dummkopfs.
The German greens are still waiting for that deadly tsunami to hit and take out their nuclear plants.
Angela Merkel and Gerhard Schroeder could not have done more damage to Germany had they been actually paid agents of the KGB. Oh, wait… Gerhard, you’ve been a naughty boy, haven’t you?
Although born in West Germany, Merkel’s family moved to East Germany when she was an infant and she was raised and taught in the East German system. Definitely a woman with a communist brain.
Merkel has a PhD in Physics
She should have known better not to start the disastrous ENERGIEWENDE
Just the expression “fossil fuels.”
Fossils are mineralized, aka stone, and do not burn.
Petroleum (aka oil), natural gas (the 2 combined are hydrocarbons) and coal.
Call it carbon fuel if you wish a simpler expression.
Organic fuels
Ethanol would qualify as an organic fuel.
After further reading, THERMAL FUELS seems best.
Sparta:
The oil/gas explorers knew that where there are fossils you’ll likely find petroleum.
Like the Carboniferous Peroid [360-300Mybp] is loaded with fossils, and likely also coal.
Other periods are associated with oil & gas [say, Cretaceus & Devonian].
So, the fuels were just associated with the presence of fossils.
I like to tell people my hybrid runs on a fossilized biofuel.
The origin story is Rockefeller back in the late 1800s was trying to sell petroleum to Europeans. As that story goes, he coined the phrase “fossil fuel” to make it seem more exotic and rare so he could charge more.
If this is true (and some contest it) then the phrase “fossil fuel” is nothing more that an advertising campaign (think “new and improved”).
There is still abiotic theory of hydrocarbon fuels.
The abiotic theory cannot explain the presence of marker compounds of biological origin.
Oil, natural gas, and coal are all created by organics “cooked” under extreme temperature and pressure.
We know how to manufacture coal. Take the charcoal process, add significant pressure and more thermal energy and time and you will get charcoal with a density akin to coal.
There are known to be small quantities of abiotic natgas. The Framm Strait methane clathrates are an example. Other examples exist in Spain and Greece.
There is NO abiotic petroleum. The two mistaken examples claiming such were just drilling mud contamination (Sweden) and bad geology (Russians about Ukraine).
The irony here is that Germans and Japanese are generally considered too practical to fall for cautionary tales that nuclear and fossil fuels could be largely scaled back or abandoned entirely in favor in of renewables like wind and solar. Now they are realizing that Net Zero is a mirage even with coal, oil and natural gas. Even Canada which has been foolish enough to follow this mirage temporarily in the past has just announced that in order to increase its electricity output enormously by 2050 it intends to rely mainly upon natural gas because the other sources can’t provide it alone.
For the life of me I can’t understand why governments think they are capable of making decisions about energy production and transmission. The recent past have shown they clearly aren’t.
Politicians cannot think further than whatever they can fit on the back of an envelope. In Oz that includes insulation batts for all, Snowy 2 and wind/solar/hydrogen/hot rocks will save our grandchildren
It is up to others to implement their ideas, no matter how impractical, expensive and society-destroying they are.
They are fully capable of deciding about power plant and transmission planning and building, but that requires longer-term thinking. Governments are planning for the next election(s). That equals short term thinking.
Speaking of Net Zero. In Australia both One Nation and the Liberal National Party have come out AGAINST Net-Zero and want to get rid of that idiocy.
One Nation also just polled above Labor in a post-budget poll..
There may be hope for the future of Australia’s energy supplies.
It’s interesting that the countries, or states such as California, which have the greatest obsession to achieve net zero, are the countries amongst those with the highest GDP, in terms of US dollars.
Germany ranks 3rd on the list, California 4th or 5th (because the figures are so close to those of Japan), and the UK rates 6th.
India, despite its largest population in the world, ranks 7th.
However, a more realistic ranking is one that uses ‘Purchasing Power Parity’ (PPP), because the actual cost of goods can vary so significantly across countries.
Using PPP, China is at the top, followed by the US, and India is third.
However, if the total GDP, using the PPP method, is divided by the population, then countries with a small population are at the top of the list.
Singapore is first, Ireland is second, Norway 3rd, Qatar 4th, and Switzerland 5th. All those countries, except Qatar, have a strong commitment to a net zero policy.
PPP is useful for comparing living standards and local consumption, but it’s a poor measure of overall economic performance or national strength.
It heavily inflates the size of poorer economies due to cheap non-traded services (like haircuts and rent) that don’t reflect global trade power, technological capability, military strength, or international influence.
The IMF itself notes that nominal GDP (market exchange rates) is more appropriate for comparing the relative size and weight of economies in the global context.
Ireland’s GDP is grossly inflated by the presence of many big US corporations headquartered in Dublin due to the artificially low corporate tax rate.
“artificially low corporate tax”
All taxes are artificial, i.e. set by people.
He is talking about low tax rates compared to other countries.
These companies set up headquarters and pay almost no taxes
Ireland was a tax avoidance haven.
Net Zero is a suicide pact, because you are removing CO2 that is needed to grow green flora. We need more CO2 ppm, not less
If the political class ensure constant, reliable, stable power plants are not only removed from the system, but physically deconstructed, there is no risk of voters racing back to coal, gas, nuclear etc power because it physically won’t be possible. In addition, any new construction efforts will take years, with Leftist legislation and activism in many Western nations ensuring there is zero interest amongst the private sector to risk investing money in such developments, and the legislative hurdles, and lawsuits, would likely mean no action possible until after the following election, barring something radical e.g. national disaster legislation empowering government to ignore Leftist courts and simply proceed.
It’s a pure lemming strategy, but voters in many nations are committed to supporting such efforts even as they whinge about it.
Once they awaken from woke, the torches and pitchforks become instruments of change.