Energy companies will receive compensation from the German government due to the NNPs closedown
The German federal government has agreed to compensate energy companies for losses caused by the abandonment of nuclear energy. The amount of compensation is 2.428 billion euros.
This follows from a statement by the Ministry of Environmental Protection and Safety of Nuclear Facilities, Ukrinform reports. The German government has agreed with four energy companies — (EVU) EnBW, E.ON / PreussenElektra, RWE and Vattenfall — key points for the payment of financial compensation for the phasing out of nuclear energy.
Vattenfall will receive 1.425 billion euros; RWE — 880 million euros, 80 million allocated for EnBW and 42.5 million for Eon / PreussenElektra.
These payments, on the one hand, compensate for the amount of electricity that these companies can no longer produce at their NPPs, on the other hand, they reimburse the companies’ investments.
The agreement also obliges companies to withdraw all claims and waive planned lawsuits or remedies. Such as in the case of the international arbitration proceedings Vattenfall vs Germany at the International Center for the Settlement of Investment Disputes in Washington (ICSID), in which the company demanded compensation of 6 billion euros.
The legal dispute lasted from 2011, when Germany announced a gradual abandonment of nuclear energy by the end of 2022 due to the accident at Japan’s Fukushima nuclear power plant. Energy companies said they were entitled to compensation after the deadline for shutting down the country’s last nuclear reactor. These requirements were confirmed by the Federal Constitutional Court in its decisions of 6 December 2016 and 29 September 2020. Disputes over the amount and method of compensation dragged on for years of litigation.
The compensation agreement is currently awaiting approval by the governing bodies of the energy companies, which are to submit the contract to the German parliament. The last step will be to enshrine compensation in law.
Of the six remaining nuclear power plants in Germany, three will shut down in 2021 and three more in 2022.
