LUBMIN, Germany — Beyond a nude beach and quiet marina, a giant mesh of metal pipes rises from the pine forest behind the small town of Lubmin on Germany’s Baltic coast.
If few people have heard of Lubmin, from Berlin to Washington almost everyone seems to know the name of the two gas pipelines that arrive here directly from Russia: Nord Stream 1, which transports almost 60 million cubic meters of natural gas a year to maintain the largest gas pipeline in Europe. the buzz of the economy. And Nord Stream 2, built to increase that flow but abruptly shut down in the run-up to Russia’s attack on Ukraine.
The pair of pipelines has become a twin symbol of Germany’s dangerous dependence on Russian gas, and the country’s belated and frantic effort to wean it off, with growing calls for the European Union to hit Moscow with tougher sanctions as atrocities in Ukraine come to light. .
On Tuesday, the European Commission, the EU’s executive branch, proposed to ban imports of Russian coal and soon, possibly, its oil. But Russian gas, far more critical to Germany and much of the rest of Europe, was out of the question. For now.
“We depend on them,” said Axel Vogt, the mayor of Lubmin, which has a population of just 2,119, as he stood in the industrial port between the two pipelines one recent morning. “None of us imagined that Russia would ever go to war. Now Russia is one of our main gas suppliers and that is not something that we can change overnight.”
That reliance on Russia, which accounts for more than a quarter of Germany’s total energy use, has meant that Berlin has so far refused to cut off President Vladimir V. Putin, whose war it is effectively subsidizing to an estimated $200 million. of euros. or about $220 million, in energy payments every day.
Images of mass graves and murdered civilians in the Ukrainian city of Bucha have horrified Europe and spurred calls for a Russian energy embargo, especially among Germany’s eastern neighbors.
“Buying Russian oil and gas is financing war crimes,” said Gabrielius Landsbergis, the foreign minister of Lithuania, which has halted all imports of Russian gas. “Dear friends of the EU, switch off. Don’t be an accomplice.”
Chancellor Olaf Scholz of Germany was quick to react to Bucha’s footage, condemning “war crimes committed by the Russian military,” expelling 40 Russian diplomats, and promising new and tougher sanctions against Moscow. Germany’s grid regulator even went so far as to take over the German subsidiary of Gazprom, Russia’s leading gas company and owner of Nord Stream.
But government ministers have, for now, ruled out a ban on Russian gas imports. The reasons are clear.
One in two German homes is heated by gas, and gas also powers much of Germany’s export industry. For years, Berlin happily relied on Moscow for more than half of its gas imports, a third of its oil, and half of its coal imports, ignoring warnings from the United States and other allies about Russia weaponizing its energy supplies. .
Kicking that habit won’t be easy in the short term without a hit to a German economy that, like others in Europe, is still reeling from the pandemic.
“Our strategy is to become independent from Russian gas, coal and oil, but not right away,” said Robert Habeck, Germany’s economy minister and deputy chancellor, who has been busy traveling to Qatar and Washington in search of alternative gas contracts.
The government is taking steps to make Germany independent of Russian coal by the summer and Russian oil by the end of the year. Russia’s share of oil imports has already dropped to 20 percent and Russian coal imports have halved.
But gas, which Germany relies on as a bridge to its goal of a carbon-neutral economy by 2045, is an entirely different matter. Habeck and others said becoming independent of Russian supply would take at least two years.
“We cannot substitute gas in the short term,” said Christian Lindner, the finance minister. “We would do more harm to ourselves than to them.”
It didn’t help that Germany pledged to phase out nuclear power under former Chancellor Angela Merkel, leaving the country more dependent on Russia than before. The legacy of that decision can also be seen in Lubmin.
Behind the gleaming pipes are the outlines of a closed nuclear power plant, once the largest in Communist East Germany. The same year that Mrs. Merkel celebrated the opening of Nord Stream 2, she announced that Germany would abandon nuclear power. The last three nuclear plants are scheduled to go off the grid this year.
“That was a huge mistake, which in light of what is happening now is more apparent than ever,” said Mr. Vogt, the mayor.
Even before Russia’s attack on Ukraine, Scholz’s new coalition’s plans to simultaneously phase out nuclear power and coal and turn Germany into a carbon-neutral economy seemed ambitious.
Now even Green politicians like Habeck are exploring what it would take to keep the last nuclear plants going for longer. Some worry that the 2030 deadline to close the last coal plants may also need to be pushed back.
But pressure for a quick exit from Russian fossil fuels is growing even within Germany, with some arguing that, rooted in its own history of genocide, Germany had a moral obligation that outweighed economic considerations.
“The country that proudly proclaims that Europe will ‘never again’ see places like Auschwitz is pumping €200 million every day into Putin’s war chest,” the Handelsblatt financial daily wrote in an editorial. “Suddenly, the discussion in Germany about whether our economy would grow 6 percent or just 3 percent in the event of an energy embargo seems petty and insignificant. We look like a hostage of the Kremlin.”
Russia’s war against Ukraine was a wake-up call for Germany, which for decades had bet that trade and economic interdependence with Moscow would keep the peace in Europe.
But within days of the invasion, Scholz vowed to break with the energy policy of Merkel and her predecessor Gerhard Schröder, who is still on the board of Russian oil company Rosneft and chairs the Nord Stream 2 shareholders’ committee.
Mr. Vogt, mayor of Lubmin, remembers receiving Mrs. Merkel and Mr. Schröder in 2011. They had come to turn on the gas with Dmitri Medvedev, then President of Russia. “This pipeline will make Europe’s energy supply significantly more secure,” Mr Schröder said at the time.
In February, after Scholz suspended Nord Stream 2, Medvedev, now deputy chairman of the Russian security council, said on Twitter: “Welcome to a new world, where Europeans will soon pay €2,000 for 1,000 cubic meters of gas. ”
On her morning walk along the beach and past the pipes in Lubmin one recent morning, Petra Krüger, a 57-year-old radiologist’s assistant and mother of two, said she was worried about rising energy costs and now just It was hot in the evenings. She recalled the excitement in town when the original Nord Stream pipeline was built after years of industrial decline.
“It seemed like the community had won this long-term lifeline,” he recalled.
“We were all misled,” he added. “We should never have allowed ourselves to become so dependent. It’s scary.”
Rising energy costs not just in Germany but across Europe have raised questions about who will be hit harder by the Russian energy embargo: Putin or the West.
Some argue that Germany should cut gas ties first.
“We should act before Putin does,” said Roderich Kiesewetter, a conservative lawmaker and member of the German parliament’s foreign affairs committee.
The possibility of Putin himself turning off the gas tap is a scenario for which the German government is actively preparing. Last week, Mr. Habeck activated the first step of a national gas emergency plan that could eventually lead to natural gas rationing.
Every day, a crisis team of government representatives, regulators and private industry meets to monitor gas supplies. If they start to run out, the government will step in to start rationing the natural gas supply. Households and critical public services, including hospitals and emergency services, would take precedence over industry, according to a planning document.
Not only Nord Stream is controlled by Russia. So is the largest gas storage facility in Germany, and in Western Europe, which was acquired by Gazprom in 2015 along with others. Some of these facilities have been notoriously depleting, say German officials, who see a strategic move by Moscow.
“We must increase precautionary measures to be prepared for an escalation by Russia,” Habeck, the economy minister, said, urging German consumers and businesses to start making efforts to reduce their energy use wherever possible.
“Every kilowatt-hour counts,” he said.
But there is already concern that Germany will swap one dependency for another.
In the long term, the strategy is to accelerate Germany’s move toward renewable energy, or “freedom energies,” as the finance minister called them. The government is offering new subsidies for the wind and solar sector. Until 2005, Germany was the leader in solar production. Today, 95 percent of solar cells and 85 percent of solar modules are made in China.
“If Russia and China were to team up against us right now, they could crush us,” said Gunter Erfurt, CEO of Meyer Burger, the only European company currently making solar modules from its own solar cells. “We need to bring solar manufacturing back to Europe. Europe needs to diversify and speed up.”
“We have a lot of sun and a lot of wind here,” Vogt said. “Maybe that’s the next chapter.”
Christopher F. Schuetze contributed reporting from Berlin.
Reference-www.nytimes.com