Preparing Germany for the shivering winter, the winter of cold: That is the goal of the German Vice Chancellor and Economics Minister Robert Habeck. The recent cut by Russian giant Gazprom of 60% of the gas fed into Nord Stream 1’s pipes has prompted Habeck to take over the field. In a document available to dpa, the vice chancellor states that “gas consumption must continue to fall while more gas gets into storage, otherwise this winter will be really difficult”. Among the envisaged measures is a cap on domestic consumption, which is a trend reversal: until a few weeks ago, the prevailing hypothesis was that in the event of a (Russian) gas shortage, industry would have to sacrifice itself in favor of homes, schools, hospitals. From tomorrow, however, society as a whole is called upon to use fuel more sparingly.
More significant is another about-face that particularly hurts Habeck’s Greens: while Germany is waiting to equip the North Sea coast with new regasifiers, it is back to coal-fired power plants. And if you consider that the coalition agreement signed in November between the Social Democrats of Chancellor Olaf Scholz (pictured), Habeck’s ecologists and the FDP provided for Germany’s accelerated phase-out of coal by 2030 instead of 2038. Giving air back to fossil fuel, considered one of the most polluting, is “a bitter choice, but it is a sheer necessity to reduce gas consumption,” Habeck concedes in the document, explaining that it is a “transitional phase ” acts. The dpa wrote that the government is organizing a credit line of 15 billion via the State Bank for Reconstruction (KfW) to enable the German gas market area operator Trading Hub Europe to buy gas to fill the gas storage facilities. And again, Habeck is already planning a gas auction model in the next few weeks to offer incentives to industries that save methane: those who reduce their consumption of blue gold are to be compensated financially. The ultimate goal is to increase gas supplies: Storage is currently only 57% full and the government is aiming for 80-90% by autumn.
The Liberals are also considering new solutions to increase the availability of gas in Germany, a country that met 55% of its needs through imports from Russia in 2021. In an interview with Welt am Sonntag, the deputy Fdp chairman in the Bundestag, Torsten Herbst, called for the repeal of the law banning fracking, a process for extracting fuel from shale rock that is considered environmentally harmful in Germany. “As scientific studies show, fracking does not cause any significant environmental damage according to modern safety standards: And anyone who imports this gas from the USA, according to Herbst, cannot oppose the promotion of safe fracking in Germany.”