This week the time had come: I turned on the heating. Usually I’m one of those people who sit on the sofa with a thick sweater, woolen socks and blanket for so long and suppress a tremor until there really is no other way. This year I seem to be more sensitive to the cold. It’s mid-October and the thermostat is already on two.
There are enough reasons, especially this winter, to postpone the start of the heating season. The energy markets are in a kind of state of emergency. Oil and gas are more expensive than they have been in a long time. “Consumers are facing an expensive winter,” warns the comparison portal Verivox.
Now, as a person worried about the state of the climate, one could actually look forward to rising prices for fossil fuels. The more expensive oil and gas become, the greater the competitive advantage that renewable energies will have in comparison. And the greater the incentives to use less fossil fuels, which are currently still largely responsible for the fact that so much CO₂ is released when living, cooking and showering.
But the joy doesn’t last long, if only because rising heating costs are worsening the precarious financial situation of the poor. But also because the high energy prices could turn into a serious climate policy problem. The first politicians, entrepreneurs and also journalists’ colleagues are outraged, the CO₂ price – oh what, German climate policy – oh what, the entire European Green Deal is to blame for tens of thousands of people at home to freeze this winter. They are calling for government intervention, for subsidies, for a cap on the gas price.
The high prices must not lead to more investing in fossils again
No question about it: The EU member states must do something to cushion the social hardship and to relieve their citizens of the rising heating costs, for example by increasing social benefits, the EU Commission also advises. Under no circumstances should the high global demand for energy, the barely full storage facilities, the scarce supply and therefore the high price – that is the causal relationship – lead to more investments being made in fossil fuels.
That goes from the “World Energy Outlook 2021” by the International Energy Agency (IEA), which was also published this week. “It is particularly important that energy remains affordable for all households,” the authors emphasize. In order to achieve this, however, the expansion of renewable energies must be promoted much more vigorously. The IEA criticizes the fact that, as part of the reconstruction programs after the Corona crisis, far too little was invested in renewable energies and too much reliance on coal, oil and gas for economic recovery. No energy transition can succeed like this.
But it has to, even if politicians have to overcome hurdles such as rising gas prices on this path. Because regardless of the global economic recovery and the Russian price policy, the consumption of oil and gas in this country will tend to be more expensive instead of cheaper; after all, the CO₂ price will also rise, not fall, in the future. The expansion of renewable energies is therefore not in any way a necessary evil. In the long term, it will make Germany and Europe less dependent on the fluctuating world market prices for fossil raw materials. The energy transition is therefore not “to blame” for the energy crisis, as some are now proclaiming. She is the solution.
I wish you a warm weekend, during which you can hopefully fill your solar storage again.
(This text is from the weekly Newsletter Environmental Friday you here free of charge can order.)