one of the most boring, apparently most underestimated goods are gas turbines. For eleven years they provided their services to the German-Russian “peace project” Nord Stream 1.
Manufacturer Siemens wasn’t known for scrap production either, but now things are failing in rows due to a strange disease called Gazprom imperialism. A few days ago there was zero percent delivery from Russia to Germany (the maintenance!), then 40 percent flowed, now only 20 percent. Vladimir Putin, the man at the gas regulator, turns it up and down so that the required level of 90 percent is missed in December and the rationing republic could be proclaimed.
According to Economics Minister Robert Habeck, Gazprom will decide “at its own discretion” whether there will be a complete failure, which is a “perfidious game” and a breach of contract. It’s about economic warfare, but the Russian company is telling “farce stories about these turbines, which is just not true”.
According to Habeck, gas consumption in Germany must now be reduced by 15 to 20 percent. Conclusion: The French poet Arthur Rimbaud saw the matter more fundamentally: “All of life is a farce that we have to suffer.” But do we have to freeze?
Saving energy is therefore the order of the day. The question remains: how? Green politician Habeck’s strategy of relying on appeals, on “moral suasion”, has met with criticism in scientific circles. “The economy shows that appeals bring almost nothing,” explains Klaus Schmidt, head of the scientific advisory board at Habeck’s ministry.
With 37 colleagues, he wrote to the authorities in a previously unknown letter that was leaked to us. A high gas price is the “most efficient incentive to limit consumption,” it says.
In the future, energy suppliers will actually be able to pass on the higher procurement prices, and there will probably be no lack of price signals – but there will also be no lack of those social tensions that Habeck wants to avoid at all costs.
His response to the suggestion that citizens should pay a premium for saving energy is legendary: “You won’t get it, old man.” He also doesn’t want to live in a country where you only move if there’s money for it. Hey dude, by the way: The gas price on the energy exchange in the Netherlands has currently risen by 7.7 percent to 175 euros per megawatt hour. Putin himself provides the best incentives to save.
(Photo: Getty Images)
Power brokers thrive on anonymity, on discreet advice to those in power so that their work becomes as serious as it is productive. However, once, at the Friedrich Naumann Foundation, which is close to the FDP, the trio made a semi-public appearance that is currently still somewhat gluing the traffic light coalition together in the hardest of times, as described in our “Long Read”. They are Chancellor Wolfgang Schmidt (SPD), Economics Secretary Anja Hajduk (Greens) and Finance Secretary Steffen Saebisch (FDP).
They coordinate, sound out, do troubleshooting, as has often happened since the Ukraine war – all as “their masters” voice, as silent string pullers for the Scholz-Habeck-Lindner triangle, which meets once a week for a jour fixe.
Since the Greens have been experiencing a demoscopic high and the SPD and FDP, on the other hand, have been crawling in the polling undergrowth, the three Spin Doctors are probably a kind of psychotherapeutic service. You want to hold out until 2025.
Bavaria’s pride is the economy, but it now has to fear the gas emergency. So far, the southern federal state has been supplied by the large gas storage facility in Haidach near Salzburg, Austria, but there are two inconveniences.
- In the future, Austria wants to tap into the storage itself, which was previously only connected to the German grid and mainly supplied Bavarian households and industrial companies. That’s what was discussed with Berlin. There were no objections.
- What is really fatal is that the storage facility – which until now has belonged to the sphere of influence of Gazprom and Vladimir Putin – currently has zero gas, which is why E-Control, the Austrian energy regulator, will withdraw its storage capacity from Gazprom very soon.
And then the slashing and stabbing will start about the Bavarian gas, which is an Austrian one, which makes the Bavarian Prime Minister Markus Söder slip into the Poltrige. The CSU boss has developed the inferiority complex that everyone wants to piss off his Bavarians, i.e. him personally, and do “bashing” to such an extent that a few local patriotic sentences are enough every day, including in the Haidach cause.
The federal government must make the agreement with Austria transparent and “say clearly when and how much gas will flow to Bavaria,” Söder demands – and at the same time insinuates that something has only moved in favor of Austria. A little advice to Vienna: If the man should become too unpleasant, simple indications that the CSU has overslept the energy transition.
Gerhard Schröder is back in Moscow but this time there are no Instagram photos of prayer-like gestures by his Korean wife, carried by the message: Your Gerd may please bring peace to the palaces and huts, he knows Vladimir Putin and the Kremlin so well.
On the current trip to the Moskva, the former chancellor, whom his SPD has written off like a dilapidated nuclear power plant, presents himself as an easy-going tourist: “I’m going on vacation here for a few days. Moscow is a beautiful city,” he told ntv. Schröder comments semi-irically that this is where the headquarters of the state-owned company Rosneft, for which he was the head of the supervisory board until recently, is located: “Is that so? Oh yes, that’s right, you’re right.”
He recently reasoned in the “Frankfurter Allgemeine” that “not giving up his opportunities to talk to President Putin”. He also doesn’t believe in a military solution in Ukraine and wonders why the focus is on arms deliveries.
Perhaps the Gazprom lobbyist will think about Ludwig Börne during his walks on the Red Square: “There isn’t a person who doesn’t love freedom; but the just demands it for all, the unjust only for himself.”
(Photo: IMAGO/foto2press)
And then there is Maja Göpel, 46, a doctorate in political economy and a much sought-after expert on transformation, which will combine various scientific directions at the newly founded “The New Institute” in Hamburg until summer 2021.
The think tank was founded by entrepreneur Erick Rickmers. Now Göpel is supposed to build something like this for the German Institute for Economic Research (DIW) in Berlin, as my colleagues reveal.
DIW President Marcel Fratzscher is planning a “Center for Social-Ecological Transformation”, talks with Göpel have been going on since the beginning of the year. Internally, the resistance seems to be greater than externally, especially from the renowned DIW energy economist Claudia Kemfert, who would be presented with a new star. One can hear criticism that Fratzscher’s favorite published popular books, but not enough scientifically valuable ones.
Until the DIW has clarified the dispute, those interested can deal with Göpel’s certainties: “Let’s change the outdated structures, then we can move forward together.”
I wish you a refreshing, stimulating day.
It greets you cordially
Her
Hans Jürgen Jakobs
Senior editor