Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump drew an “unusually confrontational” response from the German foreign ministry, Politico reported last week, after Trump misrepresented the progress of Germany’s energy transition during his debate with Democratic nominee and U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris.
The trans-Atlantic tiff began with Trump’s claim “that Germany’s shift away from fossil fuels had failed, and that the Germans ‘were back to building normal energy plants’,” Politico reports. The remark was one of what CNN called “a staggering quantity and variety of false claims” from Trump during the 90-minute debate September 10.
Over that same time, the network said its preliminary count had Harris making one outright false statement, “though she also added some claims that were misleading or lacking in key context.”
It was after Trump’s comment on the Germany’s power grid that some of the country’s diplomats “flipped out,” Politico says.
“Like it or not: Germany’s energy system is fully operational, with more than 50% renewables. And we are shutting down—not building—coal & nuclear plants. Coal will be off the grid by 2038 at the latest,” the foreign ministry wrote on social media.
“PS: We also don’t eat cats and dogs,” the foreign ministry added, a reference to a wild conspiracy theory that Trump amplified during the debate, triggering bomb threats and mayhem in the town of Springfield, Ohio, but that Republican vice presidential nominee Sen. JD Vance (R-OH) later admitted was a deliberate lie.
In a social media post later in the week, Germany’s Europe minister Anna Lührman said the “right answer” was to respond to Trump’s disinformation with “facts and humour”.
“As democrats, we can no longer allow false statements to stand uncommented,” she wrote. “We have stopped using nuclear power and are burning less coal than we have since the 1960s. And our energy supply is and will remain stable.”
That message earned Germany an accusation of “blatant election interference” from Trump’s former ambassador to Germany, Richard Grenell.
“For German officials, the confrontation with Trump, who has been known to hold a grudge, is a risky one that might come back to hurt them should Trump be elected again as U.S. president in November,” Politico writes. “While Trump was president, he often attacked Germany, especially when it came to the country’s defence spending.”
Days before the debate, Düsseldorf business newspaper Handelsblatt reported that the German state of North Rhine-Westphalia (NRW) is facing a €1 billion price tag to dismantle a prototype nuclear plant that shut down 35 years ago, after the plant operator announced plans to file for bankruptcy in the coming weeks.
“The 300-megawatt Hamm-Uentrop prototype plant only operated its experimental high temperature reactor for three years before the trial was shut down,” Clean Energy Wire writes. “The state of NRW now said it intends to pass the bill to the federal government,” and “insiders told Handelsblatt that NRW has a good chance of shirking the costs.”
