Germany has to become more sovereign in its energy policy and less dependent on imports, said Minister for Economic Affairs and Climate Action Robert Habeck on Wednesday.
"The more we rely on our own energy sources and the more these own energy sources are not dependent on imports, the more sovereign we will be in our foreign policy," Habeck said in an interview with Deutschlandfunk radio.
If Russia stopped its gas supplies in the wake of the Ukraine crisis, Germany would be prepared, the minister said. "We took measures to work against the idling of the storage facilities. We would withstand this well."
As a precaution for next winter, the German government last week announced plans for legislation to ensure a minimum storage volume of gas as well as coal. Storage owners should be required to have storage tanks full before winter.
Habeck also said that in the worst-case scenario, security of supply was more important than climate protection, and if necessary, coal-fired power plants that should actually be shut down had to be used. "In this case, pragmatism must beat any political determination," he said.
Germany's governing parties had decided in their coalition agreement to bring forward a final coal phase-out from 2038 to 2030. Instead, renewable energies are to be expanded more strongly and account for 80 percent of the country's electricity requirements by 2030.
Source: Xinhua
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