The Greens remained the “anti-nuclear party,” emphasizes party leader Nouripour. But given the current energy crisis, “we’re doing things we don’t want to do.” For the Greens, this means supporting the operation of two nuclear power plants.
Before the Green party conference, party leader Omid Nouripour asked the delegates to support the operation of two nuclear power plants in Germany. “We do things that we didn’t want to do, but we need quick solutions to existential problems,” Nouripour told the Düsseldorf “Rheinische Post” and the Bonn “General-Anzeiger” in view of the energy crisis caused by the Russian war of aggression in Ukraine Phasing out nuclear and coal.
The Greens stuck to their goals, Nouripour assured. “But if the two nuclear power plants in the south are needed for grid stability this winter, because above all Bavaria has overslept the grid expansion after all the years of the CSU government in energy policy, then we will support it.” According to the party leader, this does not mean a fundamental change of course. “Our program is our compass. We stay on course. Our people understand that,” assured Nouripour. The Greens remained the “anti-nuclear party”.
Regarding the climate-damaging energy source coal, Nouripour said that the coal phase-out in North Rhine-Westphalia, which was brought forward by eight years, is also a model for an earlier coal phase-out throughout Germany. “We have to get out of coal at high speed and massively expand renewables,” he demanded.
Nouripour called on the Greens’ partners in the federal traffic light coalition to be objective. “The operational reserve has been agreed in the federal government,” he emphasized. All coalition partners would “do well to base ourselves on the facts and not on the election results”. The Green Federal Economics Minister Robert Habeck is “just pulling out all the stops so that we can get by without Russian gas. It doesn’t need longer terms for that.”
The Greens are meeting in Bonn this Friday for a three-day federal party conference. To begin with, the delegates discuss the question of energy supply for the winter. An application by the Federal Executive Board states that a reserve of two nuclear power plants should remain operational until spring 2023 in the event of an “extreme emergency”. The Greens reject demands by the FDP for longer nuclear power plant operating times or for more nuclear power plants to be kept ready.
