Benefits of implementation of energy transition

● Realization of a sustainable energy supply

The core goal of the energy transition is the realization of a sustainable energy supply in the three sectors of electricity, heat and mobility. According to Alfred Voss, sustainable development is a way of life that makes it possible to “meet the needs of people living now without compromising similar needs of people living in the future. The preservation of the natural basis of life, or to put it another way, the non-exceeding of the regeneration and assimilation capacity of natural material cycles is therefore an essential condition for sustainable development. The definition of the term sustainability goes back to the Brundtland Commission, which coined this definition in 1987 and to solve the environmental problems that had become urgent, called for economic growth in which "social and ecological aspects must be integrated spatially and temporally into the economic considerations".

● Nuclear phase-out and climate protection

In public, the goal of the energy transition is often reduced to the completion of the nuclear phase-out and climate protection; sometimes all three terms are even used similarly or synonymously. Even if both nuclear phase-out and climate protection are important sub-goals of the energy transition, reducing the energy transition to these aspects is a misleading reduction. So e.g. For example, it is relatively easy to phase out the use of nuclear energy by replacing it with fossil fuels without the need for further system conversion. Climate protection, on the other hand, is in principle also possible by replacing today's fossil power plants with nuclear power plants and, to a lesser extent, also with fossil power plants with carbon dioxide capture. However, this path would not be viable in the long term and would also involve major risks, which is why neither nuclear energy nor CCS technology are considered sustainable solution strategies for the current energy and environmental crisis. Although some of the environmental problems of today's energy system could be avoided by switching to nuclear power plants and fossil power plants with CCS technology, the fundamental problem of finite fossil and nuclear energy sources would remain unsolved.

● Social and ethical goals

Apart from technical and ecological criteria, future energy systems must also meet social and ethical criteria, as outlined above, in order to be considered sustainable. This includes e.g. B. to find a solution for the current lack of distributive justice in the use of fossil energy, both in terms of distributive justice today (e.g. between the inhabitants of rich industrialized countries and poor developing countries) and cross-generational distributive justice.

   ● Improving public health

   ● Combating energy poverty in developing countries

   ● Intergenerational equity