Since the Ukraine war, all households and industry have had to save gas more than ever.
Our gas monitor shows whether more is currently being consumed than is available and to what extent the storage tanks are full.
In this special winter, consumers and industry are looking at the gas development like never before: How full are the gas storage facilities, do we have to save more?
How cold will the winter, which has a significant impact on all of this, be?
Our new gas monitor always shows how much gas we get from various sources in Germany.
And how much we use in return.
We also indicate how large our reserves are in the form of the 60 gas storage facilities across Germany.
Deliveries from abroad, primarily from Norway, dominate the German gas market.
The amount of gas available in each case results from the
imports
minus the exports to other countries such as the Czech Republic or Austria.
There is also
domestic
support .
However, the production fields and biogas plants in Germany only cover five percent of the annual requirement.
If
consumption is
generally higher than net imports and production, gas must be drawn from storage.
In order for this to be possible at all, the gas storage tanks were continuously filled in the course of 2022.
Each storage facility had to be at least 90 percent full by November 1st.
The federal government established this by law.
This goal was more than achieved in the autumn.
The storage tanks were even 100 percent full.
With average consumption, their capacity of 246 terawatt hours is sufficient to supply industry and households for a good 100 days.
Gas storage tanks empty faster in the cold months
In winter, however, twice as much gas is sometimes required as the annual average.
As a result, gas storage tanks empty faster in the cold months.
Our gas monitor therefore also shows whether the current
gas storage level
is stable, tense or critical.
The Federal Network Agency defines these categories on the basis of legal requirements.
By February 1, the storage should still be at least 40 percent full.
In addition to savings and the consistent filling of gas storage facilities, the federal government is now also relying on liquefied natural gas.
Because ships transport what is known as liquefied natural gas (LNG), liquefied natural gas can be imported from faraway regions such as North America or the Arabian Peninsula independently of pipelines.
With floating LNG terminals in the North Sea and Baltic Sea, the federal government wants to set up an initial infrastructure for liquefied natural gas as quickly as possible.
The first ships went into operation as early as this winter.
They receive the LNG transported by tankers, convert it back into the gaseous state and finally feed it into the gas network on land.
In addition to the first terminal in Wilhelmshaven, more are to follow.
There are also plans to replace the ships in Brunsbüttel and Stade with permanently installed landing terminals after four years.
Are LNG terminals necessary new infrastructure or a stopper in climate targets?
However, it is disputed whether, in the long term, we will import more liquefied natural gas than is actually needed with this infrastructure.
That is why there has recently been criticism of the LNG plans on the German coast.
Researchers at the New Climate Institute assume that at least five more terminals could possibly be built in addition to the terminals already officially planned.
If Germany wants to stick to its climate goals, however, gas consumption must continue to fall very significantly over the next few years.
According to the study, if classic imports from abroad remain as high as they are now, no new LNG terminals will be necessary at all.
However, if less gas could be procured overland in the future, a gap would arise.
According to the researchers, these could already close three LNG terminals with a term until 2035.
However, the infrastructure for liquefied natural gas not only secures the gas supply in this country, but also in Europe as a whole, explained Economics Minister Robert Habeck.
Germany cannot only rely on the LNG landing point of its neighboring countries.
In addition, the terminals should also be usable for the import of hydrogen in the future.
Transparency: Our data, sources and methods
The Federal Network Agency provides regularly updated figures on imports, exports, subsidies, consumption and storage levels.
The authority bundles and calculates data based on various sources, such as the transmission system operators, Trading Hub Europe and AGSI+.
Since the Federal Network Agency updates the data at different times, we use the average consumption of the week, which is published every Thursday, as a guide.
We combine the other values, which are updated daily, into a weekly average.
We color the memory status in green, yellow or red according to the categories of the Federal Network Agency.
Since values can change afterwards, our diagram is updated every working day.
