Mona Neubaur in an interview at a newly built charging station for electric cars in Düsseldorf
Image: Stephan Lucka
In an interview, Mona Neubaur, North Rhine-Westphalia’s Economics Minister, advocates a pragmatic energy policy. However, the Green politician rejects the long-term operation of nuclear power plants.
Madam Minister, at your suggestion, this meeting will take place in a charging station for electric cars on the Autobahn near Düsseldorf that has been built according to ecological standards. The place should probably stand for your plan to promote ecological conversion in the industrial heartland of the republic. Since you came into office a month and a half ago, the Ukraine war and the energy crisis have overshadowed everything. Does the great transformation have to be postponed?
We live in an epoch that is characterized by the admittedly extremely strenuous simultaneity of several crises. First of all, this requires that a Green Economics Minister combines attitude and pragmatism and acts accordingly. It must be about solving the problems and challenges in the here and now. In concrete terms, this means for me: Guaranteeing security of supply for business and industry and thus preserving jobs and ultimately social cohesion. But this place in particular is an example of what is possible if we approach the transformation boldly and don’t put it off any longer. If, among many other things, we also resolutely promote climate-neutral mobility, we will gradually make ourselves independent of fossil fuels. In my view, the fact that Russia’s criminal attack on Ukraine means that fossil sources will have to be used for a little longer in intermediate steps can be justified if we are working all the more resolutely on the ecological restructuring of the social market economy. And that’s what we’re doing right now.
