If Germany is meaning business, they'd stop buying any gas from Russia. Why would the means how it gets to Germany even matter?
OTOH, not everyone in Europe is in a comfortable position where they can care about Russian expansion more than they care about heating their home.
But it’s true that Russia isn’t a driving force in that.
While it’s technically true that there’s shipping of LNG outside of pipelines, my impression is that the market for methane isn’t currently very global.
My point was that the resurgence of economies and cold winters has driven up US methane prices to 2-2.5x where they were a year ago.
I was specifically responding to a commenter implying Americans aren’t experiencing difficulty paying for heating this year.
How much higher are German rates for methane?
Noble principles do not heat homes, or feed the hungry.
You are free to construct a dichotomy of tanks rumbling over homes, or homes being deprived of heating during hard winter.... but you will only succeed in illustrating the Nash Equilibrium, and fail to be persuasive otherwise.
Try to look at the big picture.
b) Heat pump (installation, retrofitting existing heat distribution, if at all possible; largest problems might arise with wall mounted radiators since they much larger temperatures to operate) is very costly. Maintenance and running costs not so much.
c) Electricity prices even at the current tarriffs are not cheaper than CNG. This comes from data comparing data on similar volume and insulation buildings using heatpump and CNG heating. That will most likely change in favour of electricity, though its generation from natural gas is really popular around here. d) To change the type of heating from CNG to something else en-masse would require extreme financial, labor and supply expenses.
I'm pro giving up on the Russian CGN because I do not depend on it and I can offset price hikes. But assuming that would not be without major economic and other consequences is a nonsense.
Edit: formatting and a typo.
I'm building a house and ran the calculations (two years ago, before gas got expensive) for various forms of heating, and solar PV + heat pump came out the cheapest. We have net-metering but still need to pay "transmission fees" (7c/kWh) for electricity we later consume.
I also considered just using gas for heating in the winter, but the connection fees (installation and ongoing network fees) came out to be much more than the cost of the gas we would actually use.
Like Biden always does, he just ignored the bi-partisan sanctions passed by congress because it'll be too late by the time the courts get done (Biden subverting the system to help Russia get what they want)
This is important because Ukraine said quite a while ago that sanctions of Nordstream 2 would go a long way toward preventing war[0]
Meanwhile, the Democrats spent a morning last week waxing eloquent about the evil of the filibuster only to use the filibuster that same day to stop a bi-partisan set of Nordstream 2 sanctions from passing because it was just under the requisite 60 votes.
[0] https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/ukraine-us-not-too-l...
This has been in the US Constitution from the beginning of the country and is hardly controversial.
Interestingly, failing to uphold the Constitution and execute the laws passed by congress is serious grounds for impeachment (though it simply will not happen until at least 2023).
If something were actually bipartisan, surely it would be over the filibuster threshold?
It was 55 to 44. As some Republicans like Rand Paul always vote against sanctions, there were at least 6-7 democrats in favor.
In any case, it was merely stating AGAIN what had ALREADY been legislated before (and Biden simply refuse to execute what the Constitution demands)
This pipeline has an annual capacity of 55 billion cubic meters. It's the same capacity as the Nord Stream 1, which is already in operation. If Germany was truly meaning business, they'd stop Nord Stream 1 the moment Russian boots enter Ukrainian territory. But let's leave that aside.
55 billion cubic meters translate to about 0.6 billion MWh. The price today for natural gas Dutch TTF futures is EUR 78/MWh [1] , so that translates in about 40 billion EUR per year. It has been as low as EUR 13 and as high as EUR 165 over the last 2 years. It's quite likely that Russia would make a profit even at the lower range, so the 40 billion EUR/year is pretty much pure profit for them.
[1] https://www.theice.com/products/27996665/Dutch-TTF-Gas-Futur...