By P Gosselin on 9. March 2022
Germany “gets more than half of its natural gas needs from Russia” and “almost half of all German households heat their apartments and houses directly and many more indirectly via district heating.” reports German energy site Blackout News here.
But to punish Russian president Vladimir Putin, German leaders are now calling on citizens to endure pain by cutting back on their consumption of natural gas to heat their homes and cook their food. Already there’s talk of rationing natural gas over the coming winter, and German politicians are desperate to find a way to explain it. “If you want to harm Putin a little, save energy,” said German Vice Chancellor Robert Habeck (Greens party).
“Of course, ‘freeze to hurt Putin’ sounds better than ‘government rationing gas,” writes Blackout News, which expects Russian gas supplies will eventually be halted and rationing inevitable. The construction of liquefied gas terminals in Germany that has been announced will take years to complete.
Currently natural gas prices in Germany have skyrocketed to already painful levels. “Households with low incomes will soon not be able to afford heating,” says BlackOut News.
So much has the pressure grown in Germany to conserve gas, that “a group of energy experts is already recommending that politicians change rental law regarding the minimum temperature in rented apartments. In doing so, the experts consider comfort restrictions next winter to be conceivable and possibly necessary,” reports Blackout News.
That means tenants may find themselves freezing in underheated apartments all winter long. But it’s all for a good cause, politicians are insisting.
Unless the bitter conflict between Russia and Ukraine gets resolved soon, which few experts believe, Germans and Europeans can expect a lot of pain, especially over the coming winter. The bill for the country’s energy policy debacle is coming due, and it will be a real eye-popper
The situation has become so critical that even Habeck now sees the light and “wants to bring coal-fired power plants back online and is even thinking about extending the operating lives of the last nuclear power plants”, two sources of energy that have long been vilified in Germany.
But generating electrical power from coal and nuclear will not solve the German heating problem, noted Blackout News. “It is completely utopian to believe that the heating system in 50 percent of all households can be quickly converted.”
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I’m sure all the government offices and facilities will be nice and toasty though.
Gas continues to flow from Gazprom to the EU (and Germany).
The Germans (and the EU) just might be able to limp through this winter without the lights going out or a bunch of people freezing to death.
Gazprom (obviously) doesn’t want to shut off the gas (it is, of course, always a possibility).
That’s the reason you don’t want to back Russia into a corner— really, really, truly awful bad things could be the result.
Could Germany make it through next winter (without freezing in the dark) if Gazprom turned off the valve? I don’t know.
Nobody wants to see Germany freezing in the dark. The last time a whole bunch of Germans were unemployed, really bad things happened.
One hopes that, like the Cuban Missile Crisis, there is some sort of compromise that allows the parties to “save face.”
Anybody got any bright ideas how to do that?
Instead of two pipes from Russia, at least one could have been built from Norway. Now let Germany count the losses and benefits.
Deputy Prime Minister Novak clearly said NordStream1 is on the table.
Push it, get it.
Sign an agreement with Russia for a neutral Ukraine. Build up coal plants, nuclear and create new methods to bring in gas from other places.
Things can be done, but like the US, politicians are afraid of greenies. They would rather have us die.
Well said. The only thing I would change is that politicians are afraid of the left. ‘Issues’ like climate, race, gender, etc. are the left’s ideological spears.
There’s a race between how long it takes V. Putin to reduce Ukraine to rubble and how long it takes for the oligarchs/Russian people’s suffering to reach critical mass.
In the meantime, we’ve got a stone cold killer who might not be entirely sane with a finger on the nuclear button while we’re now (constructively) in the regime change business.
I might not sleep too well tonight.
Curious as to what you mean by “we’re now (constructively) in the regime change business.”
The longer young Russians are returned home in coffins and the more Russian wealth and the Russian economy suffers, the more potentially vulnerable the V. Putin regime becomes.
He knows it.
The West knows it.
Got it. From your description (death and destruction), we’ve been in the regime change business for quite a while. I’m not looking forward to the unintended consequences for this episode.
Yep, the US has been in the regime change business for a long time…see how well it has worked 😉
Joe Biden?
if only…
https://babylonbee.com/news/nation-wishes-we-had-our-own-oil-we-could-dig-up-with-big-machines-and-then-transport-around-with-some-kind-of-pipeline
First of all, how often do you hear anyone in power, any politician or bureaucrat admit being at fault?
Second, it never hurts to make people feel better about their current situation. Propaganda is just a form of marketing. It can be used for good, such as in this case, or for bad, such as trying to blame oil producers for rising prices.
This is what happens when the desire for easy profit overrides reason and a sound assessment of reality.
Serves ’em right for voting SDP & Green. They asked for this. They must be masochists.
The energy crisis is not helped by the many consumers, and especially older people, who are running their heating far too high. They are not only running the risk of dehydration but ‘ramping up’ (to use Griffs warped humour) their costs. The optimal is 18C-21C. Just Google ‘optimal heating temperature for older people’.
The term “Government Rationing Gas” reminds me of the mid 1970s when I was stationed in Italy. During the gas crisis, they had even and odd fill-up days, based on whether your license plate had an even or odd number. To make things worse, a lot of the gas stations were on strike. Fortunately, our post was not a main post, and we all had very good relations with the locals. The local gas-station owner would wave us around the back of the gas station, so we could fill up with gas.
California on steroids
Stupid is as stupid does. Russia is constructing a gas pipeline to China, and China can also absorb any oil Russia want’s to sell. But commit economic suicide, why not?
Please very much block the Russian trolls who repeat the obvious Putin propaganda bullshit on this site. Russian missiles are systematically destroying Ukrainian cities where innocent people are dying. Please be respectful of their deaths. If it were otherwise, there would not be 1.5 million refugees in Poland, the vast majority of whom are women, children and the elderly.
Russians north of Kiev are preparing howitzers to shell Kiev. Russian troops are unable to encircle the Ukrainian capital.
Mariupol is completely surrounded by Russian troops who have cut off evacuation routes for civilians to western Ukraine, leaving only east to Russia open, meaning they are treating residents as hostages.
Maybe you should post a little less and gather your thoughts 🤔
People should know that the situation in Ukraine is quite similar to the war in Syria.
How so?
That is, cities are destroyed by air attacks. Cities are turned into rubble. Ukraine is not the aggressor, it has not attacked anyone.
Even before the Chinese-virus pandemic, Europe was paying Putin four times the world price for its gas. Now it pays more like eight times the world price; and, on a day in December 2021 when Europe was under a blocking high and the wind did not blow, it rose to 200 times the world price (!!!): Putin, on the pretext of addressing an unspecified technical fault in the pipelines but in reality to serve notice on Europe that it was now utterly dependent upon him and him alone to keep the lights on as he prepared to invade Ukraine, had turned the gas off for a few hours. The price had duly and very profitably surged.