In March, Economy Minister Robert Habek set a target of turning around Russian energy by mid-2024, although many economists and power industry players believe this is too ambitious.
For example, Marcel Fratzscher, president of the German Institute for Economic Research, and Markus Kreber, CEO of RWE RWEG.de, Germany’s largest electricity producer, believe this will not happen before 2025, and only if alternative sources are found or accelerated. expanded from.
There’s a mountain to climb on the LNG front, too.
Germany has no LNG infrastructure of its own because of its long-standing dependence on Russian gas, so it is only now starting to build out its LNG import capacity.
For the time being, it plans to rely on six floating import terminals, the first of which is due to come up on Thursday, to help diversify gas supplies. Three are to come online this winter, with the rest to be deployed in late 2023, bringing the total capacity to at least 29.5 bcm per annum.
RWE, Uniper and smaller peer EnBW EBKG.DE have pledged to come up with volumes to ensure terminals can run at full capacity by the end of March 2024. However, it is unclear where the volume will come from.