Lion Hirth: Households need to cut down on gas, or industry will have to pick up the slack

According to Lion Hirth, Professor of Energy Policy at the Hertie School's Centre for Sustainability, the coming winter will mean making hard decisions in gas usage. “Someone has to save,” says Hirth in an episode of political podcast Lage der Nation from 1 October. “If households don’t, then industry will have to.” 

In Hirth’s view, due to limited gas supplies, some companies will inevitably have to make the “bitter decision” to close; lack of solidarity in reducing gas consumption at home would cause more companies to close and, consequently, more people to lose their jobs.

Given the situation, Hirth recommends that the government launch programmes to help companies not only to survive the winter, but also to stop production temporarily due to the energy bottleneck.

The full interview is available (in German) here.

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