BERLIN

CHANCELLOR Angela Merkel has made combating climate change one of her priorities. But she is having difficulty finding consensus even within her own government on a new energy policy, especially on the most contentious issue: the future of Germany’s nuclear plants.

Governments around the globe are seeking cleaner ways to generate power and trying to reduce their dependence on foreign oil and natural gas at the same time. And most countries are deciding they cannot do without nuclear energy, at least in the immediate future.

But in Germany, citizens are less sure about whether nuclear power should be part of the solution to combat climate change.

With electricity demand expected to grow only slowly, opponents argue that keeping the country’s 17 nuclear power plants going in the years ahead would detract from the effort to develop other renewable sources of energy.