BERLIN — Chancellor Angela Merkel, who has made combating climate change one of her priorities, is having difficulty finding consensus even within her own government on a new energy policy, especially over the most contentious issue of all: the future of Germany’s nuclear plants.
It is a debate taking place in Italy, Britain, Sweden and elsewhere as governments seek cleaner ways of generating power and try to reduce their dependence on foreign oil and natural gas at the same time. Most countries are deciding they cannot do without nuclear energy, at least for the foreseeable future.
Here in Germany, where many people are genuinely concerned about climate change, they are less sure about whether nuclear power should be included as part of the solution.
With electricity demand expected to grow only slowly, opponents argue that keeping the country’s 17 nuclear power plants going in the years ahead would detract from the effort to develop more renewable sources of energy.
Defenders argue that nuclear power, which provides 11 percent of Germany’s electricity, is a reliable and relatively inexpensive part of the energy mix that should not be abandoned if the country is going to meet its needs.
The German public is split down the middle. A poll by Forsa, an independent polling institute, published last month in Stern magazine found that 46 percent of Germans favor extending the life of existing reactors and 46 percent want them shut down.
The changed economic landscape is also influencing the difficult balancing act as the government struggles to draft its new energy policy, which is to be presented next month.
Mrs. Merkel, a physicist and former environment minister, was lauded by the tabloids as “Miss World” in 2007 for getting then-President George W. Bush to agree to a compromise on cutting greenhouse gas emissions.
But when the U.N. climate conference in Copenhagen convened two years later — in the midst of a global recession — she failed to persuade President Barack Obama, not to mention China or India, to accept the European Union’s ambitious position on reducing greenhouse gas emissions, despite a personal pitch that went on for 10 hours.
Now there are those who want Mrs. Merkel to help reclaim the initiative for Europe by setting even more ambitious goals at home. But others caution against making demands that could endanger the economic recovery that has just taken hold in Germany — led by export-driven, energy-intensive heavy industries.
“Merkel wants to demonstrate that she still is committed to reducing greenhouse gases,” said Claudia Kemfert, an energy expert at the economic research institute DIW in Berlin. “But no matter which energy sector she looks at she is confronted by powerful lobbies.”
Back in 2002, the previous government, led by a coalition of Social Democrats and Greens, passed a law requiring that all the country’s nuclear power stations be closed by 2022 and not be replaced. Mrs. Merkel did not dare question that law during her first term in office, when she shared power with the Social Democrats.
The more business-friendly Free Democrats, her coalition partners since last October, are a different matter. The party leader, Guido Westerwelle, who is also foreign minister, said this month that he wanted the life of the nuclear power plants to be prolonged.
“They would be a bridging technology until renewable energy could reach a target,” after which the plants could be phased out, Mr. Westerwelle said. He even supported the coal industry provided that production was “cleaner, modern and more efficient.”
The economy minister, Rainer Brüderle, another Free Democrat, holds the same opinion.
Mrs. Merkel and her Christian Democrats have yet to take a firm position but are generally felt to be sympathetic to extending the life of the nuclear plants. The C.D.U.’s small sister party in Bavaria, the Christian Social Union, is adamant that they remain open.
Yet at the Environment Ministry, Norbert Röttgen, a Christian Democrat, has upset many of his fellow conservatives by questioning the need for extending the life of the nuclear power plants. And not only that.
Mr. Röttgen, who attended the Copenhagen meeting with Mrs. Merkel, has since been much more outspoken than Mrs. Merkel in defending the need for further greenhouse gas reductions. He wants the European Union to unilaterally commit to reducing carbon dioxide emissions 30 percent by 2020 from levels in 1990, the benchmark year, up from the current pledge of 20 percent.
But Mrs. Merkel is no longer convinced that Europe can go it alone after it was defeated in Copenhagen. And as she reconsiders what role Europe can convincingly play, the prospect of reopening of the nuclear issue has delighted energy companies.
Jürgen Grossmann, chief executive of RWE, one of the biggest energy companies in Germany, insists that the country could not survive without nuclear power, which he argues is safe, clean and inexpensive.
But Jürgen Trittin, a leader of the now-opposition Green party and a former environment minister, rejected that idea. “Prolonging the life of the nuclear plants is not necessary; it is damaging,” he said, referring to the issue of storing waste material. He added that “renewable energy will soon account for 12.5 percent of gross domestic energy consumption,” more than nuclear.
Indeed, the cabinet agreed this month to a renewable energy action plan to have energy from solar, wind and other renewable sources represent 20 percent of gross final energy consumption by 2020, up from 10 percent now.
“There is a broad consensus across industry that we have to expand renewable energy,” said Josef Auer, an energy expert at Deutsche Bank Research. “But it will really require expanding the grid system so that the renewable energy can be fed into it.”
Electric companies in Germany, as in most E.U. countries, are obliged to buy electricity generated from renewable sources produced by individuals and companies. In some cases, that energy is heavily subsidized, and Mrs. Merkel wants to reduce those subsidies.
For Mr. Trittin, that is the crux of the energy debate. Who, he asked, would be willing to invest heavily in more wind and solar power when the government is cutting its support and at the same time is looking at keeping the nuclear plants open?
Once she returns from her summer hiking vacation in South Tirol next weekend, Mrs. Merkel will have to find a compromise. It might mean closing some nuclear plants but prolonging the life of the most modern ones. As for renewables, she cannot risk backtracking on the 2020 goal, since it would cost too much politically at a time when her popularity is at record lows.
Meanwhile, the Social Democrats and Greens are seeking to gain capital from the energy debate, hoping to further weaken the governing parties before important regional elections next spring.
“It is a big mess,” Ms. Kemfert said. “There is no real energy policy. Merkel should have stepped in months ago with one.”
