What exactly happens won’t be clear until Friday morning. “Only then can we measure gas flows,” says Klaus Müller, head of the Federal Network Agency. Only then will it become clear whether Moscow has closed the gas tap a little more. There is reason for this concern.
A Kremlin decree was received in Berlin on Thursday evening, listing a total of 31 European companies that must be sanctioned by the Russian side – mainly Gazprom Germania and some of its subsidiaries. The German branch of the Russian monopolist was placed under the tutelage of the federal government in early April. Russian sanctions now affect gas contracts passed by Gazprom Germania and its subsidiaries, as well as contracts for filling gas storage facilities. The decree, on the other hand, omits the subsidiaries responsible for transporting gas. It’s absolutely “surgical”, says Klaus Müller. Moscow apparently wants to continue doing business with Germany. How much longer, nobody knows.
It’s a new level of climbing. First, the announcement that Russian gas would only be accepted in rubles as a means of payment, then the suspension of deliveries to Bulgaria and Poland, and finally, on Wednesday, the end of deliveries via the Ukrainian Soyuz pipeline. “Overall, the situation is coming to a head,” says Federal Economy Minister Robert Habeck (Greens). “Announcements that gas, oil and energy will be used as weapons are being implemented in several places.” The federal crisis team met on Thursday to discuss the new situation.
Gazprom Germania now has to conclude new supply contracts through the Netzagentur administrator. Surely they will be more expensive than the old ones. The federal government wants to help financially. Ten million cubic meters of Russian gas could be missing, which would represent about three percent of Russian supply. You won’t know that for sure until Friday morning. Failure is manageable, says Habeck. “But the situation could get worse.”
195 billion euros must be invested
And then? Berlin and Brussels are currently feverishly preparing for the day when the situation will escalate. The Bundestag, for example, wanted to deal with a new version of the “Energy Security Act of 1975” on Thursday night, a relic of the oil crisis. In the future, it should be easier to place companies under trusteeship, as happened with Gazprom Germania. It would then be possible to prevent Russian companies from cutting off German energy supplies by shutting down refineries like the one at Schwedt or not filling up gas storage facilities. If necessary, by expropriation.
As early as Thursday morning, the Bundestag dealt for the first time with a law aimed at accelerating the approval of so-called LNG terminals. Here, liquefied natural gas can be landed in Germany as an alternative to Russian deliveries. The federal government has already chartered four floating terminals, but the infrastructure on land is still lacking. Fixed terminals must also be constructed.
These terminals are expensive. And there will be many other investments to cut Germany and the EU off Russian energy. The Commission in Brussels estimates that the sum of investments needed by 2027 will be 195 billion euros in the EU. The official will present a plan next Wednesday on how the EU can become completely independent from Russia’s gas, oil and coal within five years. SZ has a draft of the concept and mentions this huge number. The amount is in addition to the investments needed for the EU’s ambitious climate protection programme.
At the same time, forgoing Russian imports should save €80 billion in gas, €12 billion in oil and €1.7 billion in coal every year. To achieve independence, Europeans must use energy more economically: the EU’s energy efficiency directive has so far predicted savings of nine percent by 2030. The Brussels authority wants to increase that target to at least 13%.
Wind or solar plants must be in the “overriding public interest”.
The Commission also wants to make the renewable energy directive more ambitious. So far, the legal act stipulates that by 2030 the EU must obtain around 40% of its energy from renewable sources. The value must be increased to 45 percent. Among other things, the capacity of solar systems is expected to more than double to 300 gigawatts by 2028. This directive is also intended to make it clear that wind or solar plants are in the “overriding public interest”; Approval procedures should be accelerated and simplified. So far, it can take up to nine years to approve a wind turbine, the official claims.
The production of climate-friendly hydrogen as an alternative to natural gas must be stepped up, and the EU must also introduce that hydrogen through three so-called import corridors: through the North Sea, that is to say Norway and Great Britain, the North Africa and after the end of the Ukrainian War. In the case of LNG, that is, liquefied natural gas, the Commission sees untapped potential in the supplying countries Senegal and Angola. Negotiations with Egypt and Israel over those supplies have begun, he said. Algeria and Azerbaijan have also declared that they want to send more natural gas by pipeline.
In the European Parliament, however, there are already criticisms of the concept: “It is not enough to raise the level of ambition in European legislation and ask for more investments”, says CSU deputy Markus Ferber. “The Commission should be much more specific about how the goals can be achieved in the short term,” demands the economic policy spokesperson for the EPP’s Christian Democrat Group.
Especially since the pressure is building, not just from Moscow. On Thursday, Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba also visited Habeck, his message: “As long as the West pays in full for Russian oil and gas, Russia has all the means to keep the war machine running,” he said. he. “Europe needs to get rid of dependency.”