Germany’s energy crisis is a warning to Britain

During the eurozone crisis, southern European states had to go cap in hand to Germany to stave off national bankruptcy. A decade on and it is Berlin doing the begging. Europe has reluctantly agreed a 15 per cent cut in gas use this winter in the hope that German factories can stay open and German citizens can keep from freezing. Meanwhile, Russia’s state-controlled energy giant Gazprom threatened to reduce the gas flowing through the Nord Stream 1 pipeline yet again so that Germany would receive only a fifth of the amount it did before the Ukrainian invasion.

While Berlin has said it plans to wean itself off Russian gas over the next few years, Vladimir Putin is taunting Europe by cutting supplies faster than Germany can cut its dependence. The German government has calculated that it needs gas storage levels to be at 80 per cent to get through the winter. Reserves are currently just two-thirds full and there is little hope of further topping up the tanks while Putin is squeezing the supply. Spanish and Italian factories and householders have, in effect, agreed to cut their own gas usage in order to prop up the German economy.

Some EU member states have been allowed a little leeway – Spain has secured a cut of only 7 per cent, an acknowledgment that it was not foolish enough to rely on Russia. One Spanish minister remarked pointedly: ‘We have not lived beyond our means in terms of energy.’ Ireland, Malta and Cyprus, which have no direct connection to the European gas grid, have also been granted an exemption. But it is obvious that the rest of the EU is being dragged into the effort to save Germany from national embarrassment. About 40 per cent of Germany’s 41 million households heat with gas.