BERLIN — Germany’s Foreign Ministry took a swipe at former president Donald Trump on Wednesday after the Republican candidate tore into Germany’s decision to phase out fossil fuels and shift to renewable energy during Tuesday night’s televised debate with Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic presidential nominee.
By Kate Brady
“You believe in things like, we’re not going to frack, we’re not going to take fossil fuel, we’re not going to do things that are going make this country strong, whether you like it or not,” Trump said Tuesday night, referring to Harris. “Germany tried that, and within one year, they were back to building normal energy plants.”
Hours later, in an uncharacteristically direct statement, the German Foreign Ministry fact-checked Trump’s claims on its English-language X account.
“Like it or not: Germany’s energy system is fully operational, with more than 50% renewables,” the ministry wrote. “And we are shutting down — not building — coal & nuclear plants. Coal will be off the grid by 2038 at the latest.”
Germany, which was already in the midst of an energy transition, was forced to drastically rethink its energy plans 2½ years ago after the Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.
The completed Nord Stream 2 pipeline — which Trump claimed Tuesday night to have ended, only for President Joe Biden to “put it back on Day One” — was in fact never online.
“[Biden] let the Russians build a pipeline going all over Europe and heading into Germany. The biggest pipeline in the world,” Trump said during Tuesday’s debate.
In fact, Germany halted authorization of the $11 billion pipeline two days before Russian troops invaded Ukraine on Feb. 24, 2022. The day before the invasion, Biden also reversed a 2021 decision to waive sanctions on the company behind the pipeline; he had previously vowed to stop the project if Moscow launched a full-scale invasion.
Seven months later, in September 2022, Nord Stream 2, as well as the original Nord Stream 1, were targeted in a sabotage attack. Almost two years on, the perpetrator is still unknown, although The Washington Post learned in 2023 that a senior Ukrainian military officer was involved in the sabotage operation’s planning.
Before the war in Ukraine, Nord Stream 1 supplied the European Union with about 35 percent of all the gas it imported from Russia. In Germany, which had become increasingly reliant on Moscow because of its long-standing outreach policy, 55 percent of gas consumed was imported from Russia.
After initially cutting supplies by 75 percent in June 2022, Russia shut down Nord Stream 1 completely in August of that year, claiming that problems with equipment were to blame.
To soften the blow of skyrocketing gas and oil prices and avoid major shortages, the German government was forced to keep a number of coal-fueled plants online longer than planned and to restart several others as it scrambled to reduce its dependency on Russia. Those measures have since been reversed, and the government aims to phase out coal entirely by 2038. In April 2023, in a controversial move, Germany also shut down its three remaining nuclear power plants, which had been kept online an extra 3½ months.
Stephan Haufe, a spokesman for Germany’s Economic Affairs and Climate Action Ministry, said at a news conference Wednesday that the ministry was “quite surprised” by Trump’s comment that Germany was “back to building normal energy plants.”
“I don’t know what the presidential candidate means by that,” Haufe said, adding that he didn’t want to comment on the debate. “I have no knowledge of a fossil power plant being built in Germany last year. I know nothing about it.”
Haufe added that “power plants being built for the future and for a renewable energy system will initially generate energy using gas, but will then have to run on hydrogen or some other form fairly quickly or eventually.”
