Worried of a warming world, thousands of Germans reject using LNG — including Canada's
CBC
They rappelled down the side of Germany's iconic Elbphilharmonie building. Blocked a German liquefied natural gas site. And thousands of residents from across Europe filled the streets of Hamburg, Germany, in what has been a weeklong protest calling for a more sustainable society.
At the heart of their movement is this warning: liquefied natural gas (LNG) is not the solution to the energy crisis magnified by Russia's invasion of Ukraine.
As Russian military aggression in Ukraine reaches the six-month mark, governments and energy industry lobbyists, including Canada's, are floating the idea that adding LNG capacity could help circumvent Europe's reliance on Russia's oil and gas supply. But there's backlash to the idea, with one demonstrator in Hamburg suggesting that to invest more in LNG would be "climate suicide," exacerbating already high levels of carbon in the atmosphere.
"In general there's the idea that Europe needs LNG to stay warm in the winter and this is really a lie," Toni Lux told CBC News from the site of a protest camp set up this week in northwest Hamburg.
Lux is with the German climate activist group Ende Gelände, who along with 40 other groups, came together to create the System Change Camp. Since Monday, an estimated 6,000 people from across Europe have joined in the festival-like atmosphere, tenting, working and sharing ideas in Hamburg's Altona Volkspark.
Many of those ideas have focused on alternatives to expanding LNG reliance, which the German government is considering in response to the energy crisis sweeping Europe.
But Lux said energy policy needs to stay fixed on transitioning to renewable sources, saying more terminals would be "a crime against climate and against people."
Since Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered the invasion of Ukraine on Feb. 24, sanctions imposed by Europe and the West sparked retaliation from the Kremlin in the shipment of energy supplies. Germany, in particular, has been hard hit as it relies heavily on Russian gas pumped through the Nord Stream Pipeline, which has been reduced to about 20 per cent of its usual supply since July 27. (The Kremlin has blamed the reduction on technical issues, saying that Western sanctions affected its ability to get turbines from Canada and perform other maintenance on the pipeline.)
Regardless, as energy prices around the world shoot upward, companies and governments — including Canada — are considering more LNG development as a possible solution.
WATCH | As Russia curbs natural gas exports, Europe has to conserve:
As Germany's co-ordinator of Transatlantic Cooperation, Michael Link has previously visited Ottawa promoting the need for more LNG and other trade between his country and Canada. Link said that while he understands it takes years to build infrastructure for LNG terminals, the need is urgent.
"I'm not speaking only about Germany," he said in an interview with CBC News Network's Power & Politics host Vassy Kapelos. "Italy, the Netherlands, a lot of us in the European Union really are in bitter need of safe democratic energy suppliers. And I think that would be good news for Canada too … because I see Germany and Canada and the European Union as a whole as ideal partners."
In June, Reuters reported that German government officials, including Chancellor Olaf Scholz, are interested in Canada's export potential for LNG, suggesting Scholz and Prime Minister Justin Trudeau met on the sidelines at a G7 summit.
At the same time, the news agency reported that federal Natural Resources Minister Jonathan Wilkinson has spoken with Canadian LNG companies with established infrastructure about whether they could increase exports to meet the demand from Europe.
