The invoice
BASF, the world’s largest chemical company, announced in 2022 it would permanently downsize operations in Ludwigshafen — its hometown, its founding site — and shift investment to China. The reason was not labor costs, not regulation, not taxes. The reason was the electricity bill. German industrial electricity prices reached three times the US average. A glass factory in the Rhine valley that survived two world wars could not survive the Energiewende.
We do not have a position on reactor physics or cesium half-lives. We have a position on whether European industry can compete when electricity costs what it costs. The answer, increasingly, is no.
The nuclear advocates and the green transition argue about which electrons are morally preferable. We want electrons that cost less than the margin on the product. France’s nuclear-powered industrial rate is roughly half of Germany’s renewable-powered rate. That difference does not show up in climate models. It shows up in plant closures, in supply chain relocations, in the quiet migration of capital to jurisdictions that prioritized affordability over ideology. The sovereignty analysts frame energy as security. We agree — and add that a deindustrialized Europe has nothing left to secure.
The European Green Deal promises net zero by 2050. If the path to net zero runs through electricity prices that hollow out the industrial base, the continent arrives at 2050 clean and poor. We have not seen anyone model that trade-off honestly.
Where we concede ground: Cheap energy is not inherently clean. Source indifference makes us natural allies of fossil incumbents.
What would change our mind: If EU industrial output grew steadily for a decade at current energy prices, proving competitiveness survives the premium.
Read the full synthesis: Why did Europe reject nuclear, and was it worth it?