If Germany had kept operating its existing nuclear power plants from 2002 and invested in new reactor capacity, it would have cut costs associated with its energy transition in half and secured its climate goals in the process, research has suggested.

In a paper published in the International Journal of Sustainable Energy, Jan Emblemsvag, a professor at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology, estimated nominal expenditure on Germany’s ‘Energiewende’ energy transition policy at €387bn with associated subsidies of €310bn – a total nominal expenditure of €696bn.

The paper said that assessing the cost of new nuclear was “difficult”, but a nuclear policy that included keeping existing plants in 2002 operational, would have required an expenditure of €364bn, which is €332bn less than the Energiewende.