German Court's Nuclear Ruling Means Payouts: E.ON

E.ON has welcomed a ruling by Germany's Federal Constitutional Court December 6 according to which at least partial compensation will have to be awarded for the early nuclear phase-out.

The German utility said the court "thus acknowledges above all the importance of trust when it comes to investments made on the basis of political decision."

Based on the German government’s long-term energy concept adopted in late 2010, which saw nuclear energy as a ‘bridging technology’, E.ON said it had invested several hundred million euros to extend the service life of its nuclear power plants. The accelerated energy transition in the wake of the Fukushima accident in 2011 and the rapid nuclear phase-out had fully devalued these investments and yet the government had told it and other nuclear generators there was to be no compensation.

The 2011 decision had the unintended consequence of increasing coal-fired generation in Germany, increasing emissions and slowing the rollout of gas.

Inside Gundremmingen nuclear power plant (Image credit: RWE)

"The Federal Constitutional Court found today that the legislator should have at least taken these losses into consideration for its decision at the time. It is now the responsibility of policymakers to implement the Constitutional Court’s ruling," said E.ON in a statement. The company said it is prepared to enter into constructive talks with the German government on the implementation of the ruling, but cautioned that such talks may take some time and that it is not expecting any payments anytime soon, and that it could not estimate any claims until it had had more time to analyse the court's ruling. 

E.ON, RWE and Sweden's Vattenfall together claimed the forced closure by 2022 of their reactors amounted to expropriation of their assets. Germany’s third-largest generator EnBW did not join the suit against the government. The state of Baden-Wurttemberg, which controls EnBW, has been run by a Greens-led coalition since 2011 and the party became the largest in this weekend’s state elections.

Mark Smedley