The gas crisis unleashes a coal fever in Berlin

The feared shortage of Russian gas due to the war in ukraine is causing an unusual demand from individuals for this form of heating, despite its harmfulness. “Everyone wants coal, we’ve never seen anything like it,” he says. Frithjof EngelkeBerlin’s supplier of that fuel.

Engelke, head of the hundred-year-old family company Hans Engelke Energytold the AFP agency that he already has deliveries scheduled until October, while they began to bag coal to sell to those who come directly to the factory.

mass customers

In Berlin, between 5,000 and 6,000 homes are still heated with coal, a tiny fraction of the 1.9 million that make up the housing stock, according to the city council.

These are generally older people, sometimes totally dependent on this fuel and living in old houses that were never renovated. Or, of lovers of the intense heat that emanates from the old stoves.

But this year, new customers have arrived “in droves,” says Engelke, whose small business also sells pellets (granulated wood fuel) or fuel oil.

Now “those who normally used gas but still have a stove at home, want coal”, a phenomenon, according to him, widespread throughout Germany.

Jean Blum, 55, is part of that group. Since he started having gas at home, he lit occasionally, and only with wood, he explains.

But with the gas price hikewhich will become more acute across Germany from October when operators can pass on rising energy prices to the consumer, he wants to make sure he is well equipped.

“Even if it’s bad for your health, it’s always better than being cold,” he says.

Though the price of coal has also climbed 30% in Germany, it is still cheaper than wood, whose prices have doubled.

Coal boom in Germany

The government of Olaf Scholz it has already decided to increase the use of coal-fired and nuclear power plants to meet the huge electrical needs of its industry.

And this, despite the fact that, as the Social Democratic chancellor recently declared, he does not renounce his goal of abandoning this polluting energy by 2030 and excludes “a resurgence of fossil fuels, in particular, coal.”

But with all those new private customers popping up, it’s hard to answer the high demand and many small Berlin coal merchants no longer have anything to sell.

“We produce at full capacity during the summer, with three shifts, seven days a week,” the company’s spokesman told AFP. LEAGThoralf Schirmer, located in the Lusatian mining basin (east).

The other factory that supplies the market in Germany, based in the rhine basinwill stop producing at the end of the year, further reducing supply at a time when Vladimir Putin has already partially cut off the gas tap to Germany.

“I’m a bit afraid of winter,” admits Frithjof Engelke. These days, people seem reassured when they learn they’ll have to wait at least two months before receiving their order, he says. “Things will be different when it starts to get cold outside.”