German Industry and Climate Protection Minister Robert Habeck (Greens) announced a pre-alarm stage of the national emergency plan on gas supplies. The emergency plan includes three levels: pre-alarm, alarm and emergency. The pre-alarm stage includes the establishment of a working group that monitors the situation and can decide to cut energy to some end-consumers. However, in order to do that, the third stage (emergency) must first be reached. In that case, households would continue to receive gas, but a few large customers from industry would get none or a reduced amount.
The decision has been taken in view of possible disruption of Russian gas supplies following the EU decision to not accept Russia’s demands for “hostile states” to pay in rubles.
Germany currently imports a staggering 24% of its national energy needs from Russia, in the form of natural gas and oil. If that supply is stopped, Germany would quickly sink into economic collapse and social chaos.