Letter: Germany’s ‘gas now, hydrogen later’ approach is the way to go

Charles Michel’s call for an energy union (Opinion, October 6) is precisely the sort of joined-up strategic thinking Europe has lacked, but today’s crisis cannot solely be attributed to the war in Ukraine. It has indeed exposed the cracks in a union composed of 27 energy “private preserves”.Germany’s decision to tie itself to the Nord Stream pipelines, and forgo diversification, was a bed of its own making. One need look no further than the actions of the Scholz government in the past few months and its rapid creation of liquefied natural gas facilities, new hydrogen deals with the Gulf, and return to coal. These shifts dispel the notion governments cannot move quickly when they need to, but the extent of the investment shows how far Germany had underinvested. The same is true, to a greater or lesser extent, across the continent.An energy union pursuing…

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