The Austrian government has decided to halt its imports of nuclear energy by 2015

The Austrian government has decided to halt its imports of nuclear energy by 2015, Austrian Press Agency reported on Tuesday.

Currently, the share of nuclear energy inside the total electricity imports of Austria amounted to an average of some 6 percent.

Austrian Environmental Minister Reinhold Mitterlehner Tuesday said that the share of nuclear energy imports could be substituted by expanding the renewable energy and also the increase of investment in hydropower.

With the assist of new Green Electricity Act, he was convinced of "relatively quick" transfer to nuclear-free electricity supply.

Renewable energy including biomass, wind power, photovoltaic and hydropower will likely be further strengthened. Alone for hydroelectric power, a total investment of 2 billion euros (about 2.87 billion U.S. dollars) was planned for the next two years.

Furthermore to increased financial input, 1 third of measures aiming to promote the self sufficiency of Austrian electricity supply are to enhance energy efficiency. In the calculations, a rise of 1.five percent in electricity consumption was taken into account.

The feral government also set of the objective of becoming electricity exporter by 2050. Mitterlehner evaluated this target as "very ambitious but achievable."

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