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.