The federal government is launching a gas reserve as a crisis prevention instrument. Which scenarios should gas customers be protected from – and how much it will cost them.
Berlin. A national gas reserve is intended to hedge supply risks in the future. It is planned as “crisis preparedness” - for extreme cases or sabotage. The reserve is to be financed through a levy, which will increase gas costs. The cabinet introduced a draft law by Economics Minister Katherina Reiche (CDU), which is now being discussed in the Bundestag. What it's about:
What is the goal of the gas reserve?
“The gas reserve serves to secure the gas supply if there would otherwise be a threat or imminent gas shortage,” says the draft law. The reserve is intended to hold “additional” quantities of gas. It should only be used in specific exceptional cases. In the event of the emergency level, the Federal Network Agency should be able to use it to avoid supply bottlenecks.
Minister Reiche had mentioned crisis situations in which energy flows to Germany were disrupted. According to the draft law, the use of the gas reserve is intended to prevent the supply of industrial customers from being switched off or temperature specifications from having to be imposed for public and private buildings. “The development will take place gradually over three years,” said Reiche. The aim is to create the legal requirements in good time so that Germany is already prepared for the winter of 2027/28.
What is the size of the reserve?
The gas reserve is said to have a volume of 24 billion kilowatt hours - that would correspond to around ten percent of Germany's storage capacity. For this target volume, the failure of the most important import infrastructure for a period of 30 days was taken into account. This amount of gas should also cover other scenarios, as the draft states:
20 days loss of all Norwegian pipeline imports,
40 days of failure of the liquefied natural gas (LNG) terminals in Germany,
ten days of full supply to households and businesses in the event of a failure of all imports due to the demand of an extremely cold winter as well
18 days of full supply to households and businesses in the event of a failure of all imports given the demand of a normal winter.
How high will the levy be?
"For the strategic gas reserve, we expect one-off costs of 1.3 to 1.8 billion euros in the first 3 years. These will be interim financed through loans and the ongoing costs will be refinanced through a levy," says Reiche.
However, this levy for gas customers is quite controversial in the CDU/CSU and SPD government factions. The first “allocation period” is scheduled to begin on October 1, 2027.
The draft bill estimates the consequences: For a typical household in an apartment building with an annual consumption of around 13,000 kilowatt hours or a typical household in a single-family house with an annual consumption of 20,000 kilowatt hours, this means annual costs of 3.77 to 6.11 euros or 5.80 to 9.40 euros. As a result, gas procurement costs increased by 0.3 to 0.5 percent.
The total costs are estimated at 247 to 405 million euros per year. Around 40 percent of them would be borne by household and commercial customers and around 60 percent by industrial customers.
Criticism of the levy came from the Association of Municipal Companies. Managing Director Ingbert Liebing called for the costs of the gas reserve to be financed from the federal budget. A levy would put an additional burden on consumers and gas suppliers.
What happens to the specifications for gas storage?
The specifications for filling levels are scheduled to expire at the end of March 2027. An average filling level of 70 percent should actually be achieved by November 1st. This was clearly missed. The storage facilities are currently around 59 percent full. A spokeswoman for the Federal Ministry of Economics emphasized that the gas supply was secured for the winter. It is not just the storage levels that are crucial for security of supply, but also the actual withdrawal, ongoing gas imports and other precautionary measures. Gas comes particularly via pipelines from Norway, via LNG terminals and via European neighbors.
The gas reserve should not be a replacement for the market mechanism when filling the gas storage facilities. The market players should bear full responsibility for winter precautions and the fulfillment of their delivery obligations and consumption quantities, as the draft states. “From our point of view, it is important that the gas reserve is only used as an ultimate means in physical bottleneck situations,” said Liebing.
What could change the storage filling?
Wholesalers normally buy natural gas cheaply in the summer. They store it and resell it in the winter for a profit to also cover the costs of storage. But the Iran conflict is causing high wholesale prices. As a result, storage is only economically attractive to a limited extent, as gas has to be purchased more expensively in the summer than it can be sold for the winter according to current expectations, as the Federal Association of the Energy and Water Industry explained.
As part of a planned EU energy security framework, the Ministry of Economic Affairs is considering tightening the responsibility of gas suppliers to ensure adequate supplies to their customers. To this end, supplier obligations subject to sanctions should be made possible, according to a paper available to the German Press Agency.
