Poorly filled gas storage facilities: naivety has changed sides

It's November, it's getting increasingly cold and wet, and St. Martin's is just around the corner. While the season of lantern parades is now beginning for parents with small children, another season is starting in terms of energy industry: the season of gas withdrawal. Unfortunately, we have a problem: German gas storage facilities are only 60 percent full - the lowest they have ever been at this time of year. What's more, the price of gas on the stock exchange has broken through the 100 euro mark - as it last did at the end of 2022. So it will be an expensive winter, and if it gets really cold in January, there may even be a shortage of gas on certain days.

One wonders how this could happen: the second energy price crisis within four years? And on top of that, only half full memory?!? It is as if the Chancellor and the responsible minister closed their eyes to reality in March 2026, after Trump's attack on Iran. Instead of remembering the lessons of 2022, filling the gas storage facilities and promoting alternatives to expensive gas and oil, the opposite was done - relying on the gas market, cutting heat pump subsidies and slowing down renewables.

When researching the causes of this behavior that is difficult to explain, one ends up with the identity crisis of the German conservatives. Former Zeit editor-in-chief Roger de Weck described the culture-war impulse as the core problem of today's conservatives in his recently published volume “The Splendor and Misery of the Conservatives”. I would like to add another facet to this: a new geopolitical and energy policy naivety.

Everyone needs energy. Switching to solar, wind, etc. can make them more climate-friendly, more democratic and cheaper. But the fossil fuel lobby is stubbornly fighting for survival. Patrick Graichen regularly explains how energy policy works here. He was State Secretary for Economic Affairs under Robert Habeck and co-founder of the think tank Agora Energiewende. Today he is a consultant, supervisory board member and blogger.

Things used to be different. In my youth - it was a long time ago, it was the 1980s in the Bonn Republic and Helmut Kohl was the eternal chancellor - it was certainly the case that we, the green and left-wing youth, were considered naive. We would not understand geopolitics and would turn a blind eye to the threats posed by “the Russian”. In addition, we are quixotic with our dreams of green technologies; no industrialized nation can be supplied with solar and wind energy.

Today the roles are reversed: first it was Putin's gas dependence, then Trump's - in both cases conservatives assured that there was nothing to worry about. Until gas prices exploded. The magical thinking also applies to energy technologies: While wind and solar energy now account for over 80 percent of newly built energy sources worldwide, German conservatives dream of new, outrageously expensive nuclear power plants or even fusion reactors. They also believe that the end of the combustion engine in 2035(!) will save the German car industry, while at the same time the electric car is making its triumphant advance in Europe and China.

Naivety, it seems, has changed sides: the unworldly people are now gathering at FAZ and Welt, and you, dear taz readers, are the new realists... it's all amazing, like so many things these days!

Unfortunately, this knowledge only helps to a limited extent in the winter. So take a look at the warm sweaters. And if you or your friends have an oil or gas heater in the basement: now is the right time to get offers for a heat pump and submit the KfW application - the funding rates will fall again in February. In any case: stay stable in the gray November!