“The cost of having to close down their nuclear power plants and the heavy subsidies afforded to renewable energy have pushed them deeply into the red, the companies argue.”
Not to mention that the green energy systems are economically wasteful, no matter how much one (or one society) can fantasize....
This is one of the biggest and most misunderstood business enterprises in existence. When they designed a nuke plant...they believed it would pass easily to the 20-year point, and that profit would easily pay off the entire cost....then they’d recertify the nuke plant for a second twenty-year deal...with most of this money as all profit, and eventually cover the shut-down process.
Once the German gov’t changed the rules, and no recertification at 20 years for another period...the whole business formula went out the window, and profits were marginal or non-existent.
Add on the fact that various small-time syndicates showed up and did green-energy projects to push power onto the grid, and that just confused matters even more.
There’s no doubt that wind energy will probably reach some 80-percent point within a decade in Germany. Will the big guys keep enough coal plants up and operational to cover non-wind days? Doubtful. Who will they buy energy from to cover the non-wind days? Some outside source like Poland or Czech or France. And Germans will pay a hefty amount for that power.