Bavaria’s world-famous breweries and the upcoming Oktoberfest beer festivals are under threat as German authorities search for new ways to save energy.
Wolfgang Huebschle, an economic advisor to the mayor’s office in the city of Augsburg, has called on Bavaria to shutter its energy-intensive beer breweries, telling The New York Times on Friday that he had “no idea” about the scale of the economic damage that would be done if Russia cut off gas deliveries to Germany.
Rosi Steinberger, a member of Bavaria’s regional parliament, told the newspaper that the planned Oktoberfest celebrations – already out of action for two painfully long years thanks to COVID restrictions, might be cancelled again to save energy.
“I haven’t asked yet. But I also think that when people say there should be no taboos in what we consider – well, that’s what you have to think about,” Steinberger said.
The government in Munich has faced pressure to cancel the annual event, with detractors calculating that Oktoberfest consumes about 200,000 m3 of natural gas, and three million kWh of electricity.
Germany’s Christmas markets, another longstanding tradition and tourist attraction, are also threatened with cancellation, officials say.
On Wednesday, the Munich city administration announced that hot water would be turned off in all public buildings as part of the city’s electricity and heating savings targets. Additional measures include a maximum temperature of 19 degrees during winter, a shutoff in the heating of corridors and rarely used buildings, a shutoff in the lighting of historic buildings in the city center, and the turning off of most fountains at night.
German Economy Minister Robert Habeck has recently taken to Twitter to wag his finger at ordinary Germans refusing to do their part to save energy. “If you think, OK, swapping out the shower head, thawing out the freezer or turning down the heater, none of that makes a difference – you are deceiving yourself. It is an excuse to do nothing,” he complained.
Habeck has set a national energy-saving target of 20 percent, and taken unconventional measures for a Green Party politician to reduce energy dependence on Russia and stock up on natural gas ahead of the heating season, including the reactivation of mothballed coal-fired soot-spewing power plants.
Authorities have spent months urging ordinary people to bathe less, wear cozy sweaters to keep warm, ride bikes more to get around, and take other measures to deal with the energy crisis.
Earlier this month, the German Trade Union Confederation warned that major sectors of Germany’s highly industrialized economy could “permanently” collapse thanks to the dual inflation and energy crises pummeling the nation. Most at risk are the aluminum, glass, and chemical industries, according to the union.
Germany purchased about 40 percent of its gas and a quarter of its oil from Russia before the escalation of the security crisis in Ukraine earlier this year, and it has been especially hard-hit after agreeing to Brussels’ directives to cut down energy dependence on Russia.
Ordinary people have already been impacted by the crisis, with a survey conducted by the Institute of New Social Answers last month revealing that one in six residents have resorted to skipping meals thanks to skyrocketing food inflation. Also in June, a report found that German farmers are bracing to lose up to three million tons of harvest due to the EU’s Ukraine-related sanctions on Russian and Belarusian fertilizers. Earlier this year, German industry leaders warned that the “experiment” in weaning the industrial economy off of Russian energy could spark the country’s gravest economic crisis since World War II.
Senior EU officials have barely registered ordinary Germans’ pain, with European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, Germany’s former defense minister, telling people to just turn their thermostats down a couple degrees, and EU foreign affairs head Josep Borrell saying the energy crisis is a cross Brussels must bear to free itself from dependence on Russia.
Russian President Vladimir Putin has characterized Europe’s efforts to wean itself off Russian energy as “suicidal,” and warned that “obviously, together with Russian energy resources, economic activity will also be leaving Europe for other regions of the world.” In this situation, he said, Russia “must proceed pragmatically and primarily from our own economic interests.”
Last week, Putin said that the West and its allies in Kiev were wholly responsible for the present downturn in gas deliveries from Russia, pointing to Ukraine’s decision to shut down one of the gas pipelines running through its territory to Europe, as well as Poland’s decision to shut down the Yamal-Europe network, and a move by Canada to delay the delivery of a gas pumping turbine back to Russia, citing sanctions.
“How is this Gazprom’s responsibility? What does Gazprom even have to do with this? [The West] cut off one route, then another, and sanctions this gas pumping equipment. Gazprom is ready to pump as much gas as necessary. But they have shut everything down,” the Russian president stressed.