Stuttgart (dpa / lsw) – Baden-Württemberg’s Prime Minister Winfried Kretschmann fears “severe shortages” with serious consequences for the economy in the southwest due to the throttling of Russian gas. “That worries me a lot,” said Kretschmann on Wednesday in the SWR news summer interview. In such an emergency, it is the task of the Federal Network Agency to decide: “Who is to temporarily turn off the gas?” Those would be difficult decisions. Kretschmann pointed out that 70 percent of the bakers in the southwest baked with gas. “You can’t turn off the gas,” said the head of government. Otherwise there would be no more bread.
He once again called on citizens to help save energy. Turning the thermostat down a bit or turning off the heating at night mitigates the crisis somewhat. “Everyone is challenged,” said Kretschmann. The Prime Minister emphasized that he was doing everything in the state and in the federal government so that renewable energies would now be expanded more quickly. “I hope I’m loud enough already.” Many brakes on renewables would now be released. Germany urgently needs to become more independent of those “who then let us down the rope, like Putin is doing right now.”
