After the incident of Fukushima Daiichi from March 11th 2011, Germany decided to accelerate the phase out process from nuclear power, resulting in the shutdown of a significant part of Germany’s electricity mix (22-23% in 2010). The share of nuclear power was planned to be replaced with renewable energies, a transition that comes on top of the on going challenge of decarbonating the electricity mix.
From the perspective of reducing the carbon intensity of the electricity mix, it would have been more effective to reduce electricity generation from fossil fuels (mainly coal and natural gas). This forms the core hypothesis of this project, which estimates the potential emission savings under an alternative scenario in which fossil fuel power plants were dismantled instead of nuclear power plants.