On 1 September 2022 a federal regulation to secure the energy supply came into force. It applied until 28 February 2023. Work rooms in public buildings could be heated to no more than 19 degrees Celsius for light, mostly seated work.
Shops were not allowed to keep their doors permanently open when heat escaped. Illuminated advertising had to be switched off from 10 p.m. until 4 p.m. the next day.
In August 2022, during the energy crisis, Winfried Kretschmann, the Minister-President of Baden-Württemberg, gave advice on saving energy. In a newspaper interview he said: “Auch der Waschlappen ist eine brauchbare Erfindung.” The washcloth is also a useful invention.
After the Fukushima accident, the federal government set up an Ethics Commission for a Safe Energy Supply. It began its work on 4 April 2011. Its seventeen members included Cardinal Reinhard Marx, Bishop Ulrich Fischer and the sociologist Ulrich Beck.
The report was handed over on 30 May 2011. It said that reducing the risks to purely technical aspects would not meet the demand for ganzheitliches Denken, holistic thinking. “Ökologische, wirtschaftliche, gesellschaftliche und technische Risiken sind zudem eng miteinander verzahnt.” Ecological, economic, social and technical risks are closely interlocked.
The commission concluded that, with the measures it proposed, Germany could complete its exit from nuclear power within a decade.
In Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, a developer who builds a new wind farm must offer at least 20 percent of the project company to its neighbors. People who live within five kilometers may buy shares, and so may the nearby municipalities. The stated purpose of the law is to improve acceptance of new wind turbines. A developer challenged the law. In a decision of 23 March 2022 the Federal Constitutional Court found it almost entirely compatible with the Basic Law. The court accepted the legislature’s premise that acceptance of wind farms is especially high when they are run by a local company unter bürgerschaftlicher und kommunaler Mitverantwortung, with shared responsibility of citizens and municipalities.
On 22 February 1977 the state government of Lower Saxony named the salt dome at Gorleben as the only site for a nuclear waste repository. Protest grew in the region and beyond. On 3 May 1980 about 5,000 opponents occupied the drilling site and proclaimed the Republik Freies Wendland, the Free Republic of Wendland. In 2013 a law restarted the search from the beginning. A commission of scientists and representatives of social groups worked from 2014 to 2016. The Site Selection Act of 2017 requires a partizipatives, wissenschaftsbasiertes, transparentes, selbsthinterfragendes und lernendes Verfahren, a procedure that is participatory, based on science, transparent, self-questioning and learning. In September 2020 Gorleben dropped out of the search. The law aims for a decision in 2031. In late 2022, documents of the responsible federal company estimated that the search could last until 2046, or in another scenario until 2068.
Wendelstein 7-X in Greifswald is a fusion experiment of the Max Planck Institute for Plasma Physics. Its design rests on an optimization concept calculated in advance. The largely worked-out application for EU support was submitted in August 1990. Construction of the new institute building began in 1997. The machine produced its first plasma on 10 December 2015. Because of the long construction phase, the total cost of the Greifswald site was more than double the original estimate. One experimental phase in 2018 had a clearly stated aim: die Richtigkeit der berechneten Optimierung experimentell zu überprüfen, to check by experiment that the calculated optimization was correct.
Germany is searching for a site to store its high-level radioactive waste. The Site Selection Act of 2017 requires the site to ensure the best possible safety für einen Zeitraum von einer Million Jahren, for a period of one million years. The money for storage has been set aside. On 3 July 2017, the energy companies paid a total of 24.1 billion euros into a state fund, KENFO, to finance interim and final storage. The schedule has not held. The law aims to fix the site in 2031. In August 2024, a study for the federal office for the safety of nuclear waste management found that, even under ideal conditions, a decision could be expected in 2074 at the earliest.
In March 2022, the Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs put Russia’s current share of German gas imports at 55 percent. Russia also supplied about half of Germany’s coal imports and about 35 percent of its oil imports. By mid-April, the share of Russian gas had fallen to about 35 percent. On 25 March 2022, the Bundestag passed a gas storage law. It fixed fill levels by date: 80 percent on 1 October, 90 percent on 1 November and 40 percent on 1 February. The law still sets fill levels by date. Since 2025, an ordinance has lowered the target for 1 November to 80 percent, and to 45 percent for some storage sites.
The reserve was written into law only after the gap had opened. It took the form of percentages tied to dates in the calendar.
West Germany introduced compulsory oil stocks in 1966. Since 1978, the stocks have been held by the Erdölbevorratungsverband, the Petroleum Stockholding Association, a public body to which refiners and importers must belong. Section 3 of the Oil Stockholding Act requires it to hold stocks equal to at least 90 days of average daily net imports. The obligation was raised from 80 to 90 days in 1998. The members’ fees come to about 0.3 cents per liter of fuel or heating oil. The stocks have been released six times: in the Gulf crisis of 1990 to 1991, after Hurricane Katrina in 2005, in the Libya crisis of 2011, during low water on the Rhine in 2018, in March 2022, at the start of Russia’s war against Ukraine, and in March 2026. That time, the federal government released 19.5 million barrels as part of a joint release by the International Energy Agency.
The German gas emergency plan, the Notfallplan Gas, has three stages: the Frühwarnstufe, early warning, the Alarmstufe, alert, and the Notfallstufe, emergency. The early warning stage was declared on 30 March 2022, and a crisis team was set up. On 23 June 2022, after Russia sharply cut deliveries through Nord Stream 1, the Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs declared the alert stage. In the emergency stage, the Federal Network Agency would decide who receives how much gas. Private households, hospitals and other protected customers would be supplied until the very end.