As participants report in the Welt, Patrick Graichen, at an event, is said to have called on representatives of municipal utilities to plan the dismantling for their natural gas network. Graichen is State Secretary in Habeck’s Ministry of Economics. Graichen referred to the timetable for the decarbonisation of Germany. According to Graichen, there should be no more gas in the grids by 2045. According to participants, he called the switch to green hydrogen for heating a pipe dream.
Ministry of Economics prepares gas phase-out after nuclear and coal phase-out
Graichen’s demand to the municipalities would be a break with the previous energy policy of the traffic light government. So far, this has been based on replacing natural gas with green hydrogen, biogas and synthetic methane gas in the long term. The dismantling of the German natural gas grid would be a radical step and would mean completely abandoning the combustion of natural gas. Therefore, this step would be quite comparable to the nuclear phase-out. The German natural gas network is a good 500,000 kilometres long.
Industry representatives are appalled by the sudden about-face from the Ministry of Economics. The Managing Director of the Association of Municipal Companies (VKU), Ingbert Liebing, said: “It is not expedient to just, like that, put the dismantling of the gas distribution networks on the agenda. This would devalue an existing infrastructure that is worth several hundred billion euros. More than 900 municipal utilities are organised in the Association of Municipal Enterprises.
Millions of households affected by gas phase-out
Liebing points out that millions of households depend on the grids, which first need a feasible perspective. The natural gas grids could continue to play an important role by transporting hydrogen or other climate-neutral gases. Therefore, technology openness would also be of central importance. By dismantling the natural gas grid, we would be blocking paths that we will still need later, completely without need.
The German government wants to stop allowing the installation of gas heating systems as early as 2024, although it is currently still promoting gas heating systems via the KfW. Habeck is fully committed to purely electricity-driven heat pumps. The head of the German Technical and Scientific Association for Gas and Water (DVGW) says: “They are trying to force a certain technology, the heat pump, onto the market without helping the heating customers. For them it will only be expensive, very expensive.” He calls Graichen’s demand “obviously driven by ideology”.
Habeck changes his strategy for the umpteenth time
It is obvious that Habeck has realised that his plan to replace Russian natural gas with liquefied gas from Qatar and the USA will not work. Now he is changing his strategy again within a few months. At first, gas-fired power plants were supposed to replace the last nuclear and coal-fired power plants. But because of the war in Ukraine, they want to do without Russian gas and replace it with liquefied gas. However, there is not enough liquefied gas on the world market and negotiations are proving more than difficult. The so often praised green hydrogen or synthetic methane are probably out of the running. Obviously, Habeck has realised in the meantime that the necessary green electricity for this will not be available in the future either. Now, with Graichen’s demand to dismantle the natural gas grid, he is first sounding out the reactions of industry. It will be interesting to see what comes next.
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