German electricity from gas for France, fracking gas to Germany, mandatory energy-saving “tips” from the federal government. No wonder Kubicki wants to open Nord Stream 2 with all this madness. But there are taboos that we really should reconsider.

The Munich philosopher Karl Valentin is often misjudged as a mere humorist. Of course, together with his congenial partner Liesl Karlstadt, he conjured up insanely funny sketches on the stages of the Bavarian capital, especially in the 1920s and early 30s. Above all, Valentin was someone who could easily lift deep thoughts to a higher level. Schlacks didn’t need a lot of words for that: “The future was better in the past,” basically says it all.

From today’s point of view, it is also not that long ago that the future was a better one. The inflation rate was not 7.5 percent, exercise books and pads were not 13 percent more expensive than in the same month of the previous year and, above all, energy was comparatively cheap for households and industry.

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This Friday, the Federal Statistical Office (Destatis) reported: Energy prices in July 2022 were on average 105.0 percent higher than in the same month last year. Compared to June 2022 alone, these prices rose by 14.7 percent. The highest impact on the year-on-year rate of change in energy was natural gas in distribution, up 163.8 percent from July 2021, and electric power, up 125.4 percent.

Blood pressure can quickly shoot up, even if we know the reason for these phenomenal price increases. Next week there has been a war in Ukraine for half a year – instigated by our energy trading partner Russia, which we have valued for years. And now? Winter is not far away and with it the start of the heating season.

Ludwig Möhring from the Federal Association for Natural Gas, Oil and Geoenergy (BVEG) told me yesterday: “For the coming winter I am cautiously optimistic that we will have enough gas and that there will be no shutdowns.” One point that should help is the defensive one Dealing with the expensive, scarce commodity.

The traffic light has already brainstormed. The “Bild” has previewed their draft regulation “to secure the energy supply via short-term effective measures” from Habeck, which is to be decided in the coming week. And there are really interesting things in there: for example, the lighting of monuments and public buildings should be prohibited. Retailers should no longer have their doors permanently open. And illuminated advertising is to be banned between 10 p.m. and 6 a.m.

Is it just me – or isn’t it all a bit short-sighted? Wouldn’t we all have wished it was one size bigger? In the direction of a clear statement: This is how we will ensure the energy supply in the coming years!

First of all, it’s not “just” about freezing in your own four walls or in the office, but also about millions of jobs. Industries that are not entirely unimportant in Germany, such as automobiles or chemicals, do not obtain their energy from a vacuum.

“The energy problems will be with us for years to come,” said Möhring, not exactly painting the future in bright colours.

So let’s talk about taboos! One who has already done this today is FDP veteran Wolfgang Kubicki. His demand in the editorial network Germany (RND) was: open Nord Stream 2.

It has to be said that he may have copied a little bit.

Already on Monday, Nikolaus Blome from RTL demanded in his Spiegel online column: “Let’s turn the tables – and open Nord Stream 2.” The idea behind it: It doesn’t matter which tube we get Russian gas from. The main thing is that Gazprom finally delivers the contractually guaranteed quantities. Stop playing good pipeline, bad pipeline.

One can have the idea, but the Federal Republic would make itself completely impossible in relation to its partners in NATO and the EU. What kind of signal would that send to world opinion in general and to Ukraine in particular? What a headline: Germany puts Nord Stream 2 into operation.

But there are taboos that we should actually think about.

The energy transition towards renewables is right and important. Whether we will stop climate change, viewed globally, is of course a completely different question. However, sun and wind guarantee us greater independence, at least in the medium term. But it will be a while before that happens.

And until then, good old coal is celebrating its comeback. And that’s a good thing, if we don’t want to be surprised by reports like yesterday that more gas is currently being generated in Germany than a year ago, despite the savings bid – and the electricity produced in this way, to top it all off, also goes to France and the Switzerland flows.

“In Germany, we are well advised to maximize the generation of electricity from coal as quickly as possible and reduce the generation of electricity from natural gas in this phase of scarcity, especially with a view to the primary use of gas for heating,” said BVEG General Manager Möhring.

So you don’t have to burst into jubilation right away. But isn’t it a deeply logical demand in the current situation? After all, the earth keeps turning, and the world market with it.

So let’s get straight to the next “evil” that is almost even bigger in public perception: According to expert estimates, there are between 500 billion and 2.5 trillion cubic meters of shale gas in Germany’s subsoil. 20 percent of the company’s own natural gas requirements could be covered over several decades. However, extraction via fracking is prohibited in this country.

Environmental pollution, earthquakes and escaping gas are named as risks. In an interview with the “Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung”, however, the deputy chairman of the fracking expert commission set up by the federal government, Holger Weiß, questioned this ban.

“One can actually only explain this with ideological reservations. There is no factual basis for this,” he told the newspaper. Because the liquid now used in fracking is no longer poison, “it’s dishwashing liquid”. Today you can do fracking with an acceptable residual risk.

In addition, according to Greenpeace, the Liquified Natural Gas, or LNG for short, vulgo: liquefied natural gas, which Federal Climate Minister Robert Habeck of the Greens jazzed up as a way out of the energy crisis, is in fact just fracking gas, at least when it comes from the USA and Australia . Either way. Fracking also needs advance notice. A year or two at least.

By the end of the year, however, the three remaining nuclear power plants in Germany were off the grid. It has recently been suspiciously quiet about the stretching operation into the coming year, which was brought into play a few weeks ago and was even found to be okay by parts of the Green Party. Merz and Söder can probably work as hard as they can and visit nuclear power plants as they want, but despite the FDP, there will be no exit from the exit with the traffic light.

So all in all: not many alternatives for securing the energy supply in Germany. So we have to save, save, save. What else is on the Habeck list? “Private pools should no longer be heated with gas and electricity.”

Only Karl Valentin can actually help: “Hopefully it won’t be as bad as it already is.”