Germany’s energy transition is much better than the USA’s

US commentators who claim otherwise are cherrypicking or worse

There are two persistent and overlapping trends in American discussions of climate change, nuclear energy, and renewable energy. The first is American exceptionalism, the idea that the USA is doing better than any country in the world despite denying climate change and walking away from the Paris Accord. The second is that Germany is awful, choosing to shut down its nuclear plants, resulting in massive increases in greenhouse gases. Neither are true.

The US is not exceptional. Germany is.

Let’s look at some of the common types of statements that emerge. Michael Shellenberger, environmentalist and ardent fan of nuclear energy as the solution to global warming, likes bold statements like the following in a Forbes opinion piece:

All that German will have gotten for its “energy transition” is a 50% increase in electricity prices, flat emissions, and an electricity supply that is 10 times more carbon-intensive than France’s.

Alex Epstein, author of The Moral Case for Fossil Fuels, talks about Germany’s nuclear shut down in equally glowing terms in, unsurprisingly, a piece in Fox News:

In the midst of a still struggling and fragile global economy, Germany has announced that it will shut down seven nuclear plants by the end of the year–which means that Germans will…