& similar questions to Adler et al. (2020), Jarvis et al. (2019) looked at the emissions and cost implications of Germany's nuclear phase-out, using a novel machine-learning framework to test existing narratives nber.org/papers/w26598.…
Their method: "predicts which power plants increased their output in response to the nuclear plant closures... to empirically assess how a change in electricity production or consumption at one location propagates throughout the electricity trans- mission network."
Result: They find the social cost of the phase-out to producers and consumers to be $12 billion per year! Most of the costs fall to consumers, and most is in increased mortality risk from air pollution exposure.
But they also find that the phase-out resulted in higher electricity rates (than the no-phase-out counterfactual), even as average wholesale rates declined from 2010-2017. I.e. they could have been even lower.
Overall, Germany's nuclear phase-out increased fossil-fueled electricity generation by 2-3TWh per month (mostly from coal), and led to a small increase in net imports. Interesting that the results persist over the entire study period, not just immediate aftermath of March 2011.
Also, phase-out may have exacerbated seasonal price spikes. Lastly the previously earned profits from nuclear power plants were mostly redistributed to fossil-fueled plants (and not to consumers)
