Fossil to the bones: How Katherina Reiche manoeuvres us into an ice age fiasco#
There are personnel decisions in German top politics where you involuntarily look for the hidden camera. Putting a former top lobbyist and ex-chief executive of E.ON subsidiary Westenergie at the forefront of energy policy is akin to promoting a notorious arsonist to head of the city's professional fire brigade – with explicit permission to distribute flammable liquids at one's own discretion.
Appearance: Katherina Reiche. A woman who manages to bundle economic shortsightedness, climate policy sabotage spirit and sheer lobby obedience in such a toxic blend that one's breath stops.
The Fossil Knee: Back to Gas Dependence#
Anyone who had believed that the collective trauma of exploding energy prices and the bitter lesson from dependence on foreign gas supplies had led to a lasting learning effect has made the calculation without Ms Reiche. With the elegance of a wrecking ball, it flattens every approach with foresight: Up to 20 gigawatts of new gas-fired power plants are to be built from the ground up – of course without annoying, binding requirements for a prompt switch to green hydrogen. Why plan for the future when you can feed the old fossil ropes so wonderfully?
In keeping with this, the switch to modern heat supply is torn up and torpedoed with delight, so that the German Michel can stick to his beloved natural gas spa for as long as possible. And to put the crown on the real satire: when it came to stifling the boom of modern large battery storage, the ministry was quite unabashedly supplied with the appropriate argumentation by the energy companies. Battery storage? Future technologies? Decentralized security? Don't worry! This could end up threatening the business model of the old corporations, whose executive floors have only recently been exchanged for the ministerial chair.
Economic policy blind flight with announcement#
It goes without saying that this policy is an absolute declaration of bankruptcy for the climate. While the Agora Energiewende dryly calculates how Germany will tear its climate targets for miles, the ministry only shrugs its shoulders. But the real masterpiece of this agenda is the sheer economic self-abandonment.
Ms. Reiche chains the industrial location of Germany to a fossil fuel that is the plaything of speculators and geopolitical crises on the world markets. Instead of relying on the cheapest energy source by far – domestic electricity from renewable energies together with modern storage infrastructure – the domestic economy is tied to expensive gas imports. This is not an economic policy, this is a concerted job destruction under the guise of supposed security of supply.
Frost roulette with half-empty storage#
A look at the meteorological situation and the German gas storage facilities reveals how terrific this "security of supply" looks in harsh reality. Meteorologists and the World Meteorological Organization have long been sounding the alarm about a massive Super El Niño: While the early winter may still be mild, the impending collapse of the polar vortex in January and February threatens to trigger an Arctic cold wave over Central Europe.
And how does a forward-looking energy policy prepare for a potential century winter? You simply let the national gas storage facilities sink in front of you on the back burner. With fill levels of just under 54 percent, Germany lags behind the previous year by almost 20 percentage points and occupies an embarrassing place in the back ranks in a European comparison. The gigantic reservoir in Rehden – once the life insurance for cold days – vegetates at disastrous fill levels in the single-digit percentage range.
The Perfect Cold Shock Recipe#
Let's sum up this feat of strategic foresight: we are becoming more dependent on natural gas than ever, blocking modern alternatives, ignoring the warnings of climate scientists and going into a winter with worryingly empty pantries, with arctic cold air fronts lurking on its horizon.
Katherina Reiche provides the blueprint for an energy policy disaster with an announcement. A policy that exclusively serves the quarterly balance sheets of fossil allies, while citizens and industry bear the incalculable risk. When we run out of heat in February or gas prices shoot through the ceiling, we know whose front door we have to knock on to warm up.