Germany At Risk Of Gas Shortages As Consumption Cutting Target Missed – Germany is saving less gas than necessary to avoid gas shortages this winter, according to the president of the German grid agency, as the country failed its vital 20% consumption reduction target last week due to falling temperatures. Prior to the outbreak of the Ukraine conflict, Russia supplied over half of Germany’s natural gas needs. As a result, Germany has scrambled during the past ten months to develop new energy sources.
Nonetheless, in the summer, the German economy minister, Robert Habeck, established a savings target of 20%, higher than the European Commission’s 15% target. A cold snap at the end of last week has sounded the alarm after a relatively mild autumn in which German firms and homes stored more gas than necessary by the emergency plan and storage tanks increased to nearly 100 percent.
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“Currently, the total savings are only 13%,” Klaus Müller, the head of the federal network agency for utilities, Bundesnetzagentur, told Tagesspiegel newspaper on Monday. “If this remains an outlier, we need not worry yet. But it will remain cold in the next few days,” he said. “With temperatures of -10C [14F], gas consumption shoots up dramatically.” For now, Germany’s gas storage tanks remain about 95% full, and the country is planning to ceremonially unveil its first terminal for importing liquefied natural gas (LNG) at the North Sea port of Wilhelmshaven on Saturday.
“We are now getting gas from several sources,” Müller said. “We will soon have three terminals for liquid gas, and we are getting good deliveries from Norway, Holland, Belgium and also via France.” He dismissed the possibility of households switching to electric heaters and overloading the grid. During cold snaps in November people could have had “the stupid and expensive idea of heating their homes with electricity instead of gas,” Müller said. “Luckily no one did that.”
After the explosions at the Nord Stream 1 and 2 pipelines in September, it appears that Russia will no longer be able to deliver gas to Germany. As a result, Berlin remains anxious about gas rationing in the winter of 2023-2024 and the possibility of sabotage in other areas of critical energy infrastructure. If the German government declared a gas emergency, Müller’s agency would have the option of limiting gas supply to entire German regions, to specific enterprises with exceptionally high demand, or to non-vital sectors of industry.
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