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Strollers near the Hamburg Landungsbrücken on Boxing Day
Photo: Markus Scholz / dpa
White Christmas has once again failed in large parts of Germany.
It was far too warm for the end of December, often rainy, windy and grey.
After all, this weather also has a good side: the natural gas storage tanks have been filling up again for days.
Preliminary data from the Gas Infrastructure Europe association show that more gas has been injected than withdrawn every day since Wednesday up to and including Sunday last week.
The average water level in Germany rose from 87.3 to 88.2 percent.
In Europe as a whole, the reservoirs also filled up slightly over Christmas: from 82.9 to 83.1 percent.
This means that a gas shortage is becoming increasingly unlikely this winter.
Because even on the mild day after Christmas, the storage levels could have increased further, and no change in the weather is foreseeable for the coming days.
In addition, the first German LNG terminal in Wilhelmshaven goes into operation.
When the weather is comparatively warm, less gas is used for heating.
And when wind farms produce more electricity, gas-fired power plants don't have to run as long.
Finally, a number of nuclear power plants have recently gone back into operation in France;
the country had recently imported large amounts of electricity from Germany.
Federal Network Agency boss Klaus Müller was pleased.
"The mild weather, with it lower consumption, more wind energy, so less gas power generation & lower exports to France helped us," he tweeted.
»Well-filled #gas storage means #security of supply for 2023 (& 23/24).«
A gas bottleneck in the winter of 2023/24 is still possible.
Unlike this year, larger deliveries from Russia are not to be expected in the coming year.
It is therefore questionable whether the Europeans will be able to fill up their stores as well before the next winter as they will in 2022. And nobody can predict how cold it will be then.
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