To protect Germany’s green transition, accept coal and nuclear power, says Veronika Grimm

RUSSIA’S ATTACK on Ukraine has forced Germany to rethink its energy policy. Until February, the plan was to ambitiously expand the use of renewables while phasing out nuclear energy by the end of 2022, and then coal-fired power by 2038. Natural gas was to be used as a bridging technology—both in industry and in the power sector, so that gas-fired power plants could complement intermittent renewables. In the short term, that is now difficult to imagine. But in the medium term there is no alternative.

Gas prices, which used to be on a ten-year-average €20 ($20) per megawatt hour before the crisis, leapt to more than €200 in March, and are not projected to fall below €100 until 2025, according to Ember, an energy think-tank. (Other forecasts, such as a recent one from Goldman Sachs, see prices dipping under €100 next year.) Gas prices tend to drive power prices in Europe–especially now that nuclear-power capacity has been lost to maintenance (France) and closure (Germany), and a continent-wide drought has reduced hydropower. Gas plants can fill gaps in electricity generation most flexibly. But when they have to run, as they do a lot of the time now, that means electricity is expensive. Moreover, the threat of gas scarcity in the next few months means their hours of operation will have to be reduced as much as possible.