Claudia Kemfert is a member of the study’s team of authors.
(Photo: imago images/Jürgen Heinrich)
Berlin According to a study, Germany will be able to get by without Russian natural gas deliveries this year – earlier than the federal government had predicted. “If the energy-saving potential is used to the maximum and at the same time deliveries from other natural gas supplying countries are expanded as far as technically possible, the German supply of natural gas is secured even without Russian imports in the current year and in the coming winter of 2022/23,” is the conclusion of the Study by the German Institute for Economic Research (DIW). This was available to the Reuters news agency on Thursday.
Federal Economics Minister Robert Habeck, on the other hand, assumes that Germany will need until mid-2024 to become independent of Russian gas. Because of the Russian attack on Ukraine, Berlin wants to stop importing from there as soon as possible.
According to the study, in order to say goodbye more quickly, Germany does not need to build its own terminals for the liquefied natural gas (LNG) delivered by ship from other producing countries. “The construction of LNG import terminals on the coast does not make sense due to the long construction times and the sharp drop in demand for natural gas in the medium term,” writes the team of authors Robin Sogalla, Christian von Hirschhausen, Franziska Holz and Claudia Kemfert. Instead, natural gas imports from classic supplier countries such as Norway or the Netherlands should be expanded significantly.
More imports from the Scandinavian country alone could save about a fifth of the previous Russian imports of more than 50 billion cubic meters per year, which so far account for about 55 percent of total gas imports.
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The existing LNG terminals in the Netherlands (Rotterdam), Belgium (Zeebrugge) and France (Dunkerque) could also be used to route more liquid gas to Germany via the European pipeline network. This could eliminate more than a quarter of Russian imports.
It is also necessary to fill up the existing storage tanks to 80 to 90 percent in good time before the start of the heating period in winter 2022/23. More efficient use of the German and European pipeline system to connect Germany to southern Europe, where supplies arrive from North African countries such as Algeria and Libya, could ease the situation further in the future.
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“The additional supply is not sufficient to replace all of the previous Russian natural gas imports,” the DIW concedes. However, in combination with declining natural gas consumption, the German energy supply could be secured. In this way, demand can be reduced by between 18 and 26 percent – for example by completely replacing natural gas in power generation. This could eliminate up to half of the Russian deliveries.
“While natural gas in the electricity sector can be replaced by alternative energy sources in the short term, the savings in industry are accompanied by a drop in production,” the experts concede. “The particularly affected sectors should therefore be compensated.”
In private households, natural gas can usually only be saved by reducing demand. Therefore, energy saving campaigns are necessary as soon as possible. “In addition, measures must now be implemented quickly to increase energy efficiency and facilitate the switch to renewable heat (in conjunction with heat pumps),” according to the DIW.
More: You can follow the current developments in the Ukraine war in our news blog