Climate conference: Why Friedrich Merz should remain silent for a few days

The 29th UN Climate Change Conference begins today in Baku. In Azerbaijan, the global community is coming together to prevent Mother Earth from falling back into the Miocene climatically. Around 15 million years ago, no people lived in our latitudes. Instead, palm trees grew in a constant heat that was unbearable for us.

Such a danger could probably be prevented if people in industrialized countries in particular produced electricity and goods sustainably much more quickly and consumed them more wisely. No serious scientist doubts this finding anymore.

But there is still Friedrich Merz, the CDU chairman and possibly the next chancellor of the fourth largest industrial nation in the world.

The man from the Sauerland, whose heights are dotted with spruce trees that have died due to climate change, declared his withdrawal from the German energy transition more and more bluntly as soon as the power of the office was transferred to him. In the talk show “Maybrit Illner” he recently pulled out the gun again and shot at heat pumps and electric cars, even though these technologies are globally recognized as climate-friendly and forward-looking.

“We have to get out of patronizing people,” says Merz threadbare. This wasn’t the first time he’d made this argument. Since the traffic light came into office, the CDU leader has been talking green technologies with verve bordering on ignorance. His revolver now has plenty of notches for all the attacks that have left consumers extremely insecure. As a result, the German market for heat pumps and electric vehicles has suffered a painful collapse.

Now he has gone one better. He promises the Germans that they will soon be able to dismantle the wind turbines “because they are ugly and because they don’t fit into the landscape.” Anyone who believed until Thursday that this argument had – fortunately – long been overcome, did not count on Merz. On this point he is not afraid to go after the last angry citizens who, like Don Quixote, are still fighting against wind turbines out of selfishness. It is the highest level of populism.

What’s really bad, however, is that Merz is simultaneously spreading completely exaggerated hope in the style of a lay scientist. He relies on nuclear fusion to generate energy, he says, i.e. the principle by which the sun works. Germany is getting two large fusion reactors: “We want to have the first one online here.”

This really hurts research climate experts. Because it is absolute music of the future that no one knows whether it will ever be heard.

Nuclear fusion has remained in the research stage for decades, according to the Federal Office for the Safety of Nuclear Waste Management. Nowhere in the world is there an experimental facility that generates more energy than it needs to operate. Most scientists rely on so-called deuterium-tritium fusion, where nuclear fusion takes place using a magnetic field. So far there is not even a solution as to how to permanently keep the 150 million degree hot plasma in the magnetic field.

The best-known prototype in the world is ITER in Cadarache, France. This is designed solely to demonstrate the feasibility of nuclear fusion; it should not generate electricity. Originally, success was supposed to become visible between 2035 and 2040. However, the date is now open again. The project constantly consumes huge amounts of money; 22 billion euros have already flowed into it.

The EUROfusion consortium was also founded in 2014. Goal: the development of the fusion reactor prototype “DEMO” (also magnetic fusion). In 2050, when the EU requires Europe to be climate neutral, there should only be the first prototype. It will then generate around 500 megawatts of electricity annually. For comparison: a nuclear power plant creates 1,400 megawatts.

Nuclear fusion using high-energy lasers is considered the latest craze, especially by US researchers. But here too it is not clear whether and when a commercial fusion power plant can be expected to generate electricity. In short: the world of nuclear fusion has been full of declarations of intent for decades, but so far not a single kilowatt hour has flowed into industry or households. And everything suggests that nothing will change for at least the next 15 to 30 years.

So Merz simply tells fairy tales. But the reality is: Germany’s only CO₂-free energy sources remain wind, sun, water and biomass for the time being. We have to rely on that for now. We have no choice.

In addition, there is still great support among the population for the energy transition, which the CDU has supported and helped shape for a long time. Merz should therefore simply remain silent and not mislead the Germans again with populist heresy. The global climate situation is far too serious for that. You can see this not only in the Sauerland, but also in eastern Spain and everywhere where floods are killing more people than ever before.