Germany had a pretty audacious but absolutely achievable renewables plan 15 years ago but Schroeder & Merkel canned it for cheap Russian Gas and now that the price for that has become apparent there wailing and screaming. It’s just normalizing - if the original plan had been pursued, profits would not have been that great but the cost of adapting would have been staggered too.
Now the bill is due.
Availability of sufficient power reserves not bound to Russia would alleviate many industrial cost issues right now. Costs are up primarily because cheap power is gone.
The chemical industry requiring gas is a separate problem with a similar root cause - supply monoculture. Germany built its first LNG terminal last year, before that it was Russian gas because it was cheap and it was betting on Northstream.
Lack of supply diversity, failure to plan, ideological blinders and good old corruption.
The article is missing the point by failing root cause analysis.
A press release on the relevant legislation can be found here (in German): https://www.bundesregierung.de/breg-de/aktuelles/energieprei...
The most important section in this matter reads in English translation as follows:
"From January 2023, industrial customers will receive 70% of their natural gas consumption in 2021 from their suppliers at a guaranteed 7 cents per kilowatt hour. For heat consumption, the price will be capped at 7.5 cents per kilowatt hour, also for 70% of consumption in 2021. For the remaining consumption, industry will pay the regular market price."
See: https://www.bundesnetzagentur.de/DE/Gasversorgung/aktuelle_g... (in German)
