The Agriculture Minister for Baden-Württemberg, Germany, Peter Hauk, has suggested lowering the optimal room temperature for central heating to 15 degrees instead of a comfortable 20 as a measure that would purportedly allow Germany to say "no" to Russian gas immediately.
"You can withstand 15 degrees in winter wearing a sweater. Nobody dies from it", Hauk said.
Apparently, Hauk sees no issue with the residents of Baden-Württemberg "freezing for freedom" a bit and believes that it's worth depriving Russia, and specifically President Vladimir Putin, of money from gas sales. The minister proposed this measure as a response to the Russian special military operation in Ukraine.
"We have to turn off the money tap for Putin […] so that freedom finally has a chance again. It's a no-go that some people here fight for freedom, let themselves be shot at, let themselves be bombed, while we stand by and say: "But It should be 20, 22 degrees in the apartment", Hauk said.
In Hauk's view, such a step from the German government, made at the expense of the comfort of its citizens, would "make [anti-Russia] sanctions work". What the Baden-Württemberg minister failed to mention in his estimates of the consequences of such step is the impact that abandoning Russian fossil fuels will have on the German economy in general.
Fuel and energy prices (and as a result, the price of nearly all products) are bound to rise after Germany does away with Russian supplies, which constitute 55% and 35% of the country's gas and oil imports respectively. German Minister of Economy, Robert Habeck, recently warned that stopping the import of Russian energy resources will have the most drastic consequences for the country's economy.
Russia, in turn, recently announced its response to the Western sanctions over the operation in Ukraine and said it will demand that payments for gas from "unfriendly nations" be made in rubles instead of dollars or euro. While the EU authorities rejected the idea, citing the existing contracts with Gazprom, it is unclear how they are going to enforce the payments in euro once Moscow implements the measure.