Understanding German energy dependency

Photo by Martin Adams on Unsplash

Germany has been searching its soul this week over its deep dependence on Russian energy supplies. The country is waking up to the fact that a policy that was supposed to moderate the Kremlin’s behaviour is instead filling Russia’s war coffers.

A mad scramble is now underway to source energy elsewhere.

In light of this, I thought it might be useful to give you a little background on German energy needs. Is this just about gas? How easy is it to change suppliers? And finally, can these needs eventually be met domestically instead?

Sticky, tricky, crude

The first thing to emphasize here is that this is about much more than just natural gas.

In the media, Russian gas is often used as shorthand for German energy imports. This is pretty misleading.

The sobering reality is that crude oil is still the country’s single most important energy source. It supplied roughly a third of Germany’s total energy needs back in 1990 and - after 30 years of climate policies - it …