German BMW plants will stop when gas supplies from Russia are cut off

Today, one of the representatives of the board of directors of the Bavarian auto giant spoke about the dependence of assembly capacities on natural gas supplies from the Russian Federation. The company sees no alternative to Russian energy resources, and therefore does not support the idea of ​​stopping purchases.

What is known

The German automotive industry consumes more than a third of the natural gas entering the country. And a sharp drop in volumes will provoke a shutdown of not only BMW plants, but the entire industry as a whole. This can lead to a protracted and deep crisis, since the German economy is largely dependent on automakers and other large industries that need gas for their normal functioning.



According to Milan Nedelkovich, the enterprises were not ready for such a turn of events and consider the government's decision to be thoughtless. Decrease in volumes of purchases will harm first of all Germany. The industrial sector is the main consumer of natural gas, it will not be possible to reorient supply channels in a short time, and other countries are not able to provide the required volumes.

In connection with the situation, a meeting of the BMW management was held, at which ways were worked out to reduce dependence on natural gas. Solar energy, the creation of geothermal systems and the use of hydrogen were chosen as priority areas.

The latter option, according to top management, is most suitable as an alternative to gas. But it takes time to create systems that run on hydrogen and provide the necessary performance. It will take at least a few years before it will be possible to compensate for at least half of the current consumption of fossil fuels.



In addition, all these options are associated with huge investments, which also imposes certain restrictions. Today, most automakers are not in the best position to direct significant funds for energy re-equipment. It would be expensive to develop new systems to keep production running, and it would be much easier to continue to use natural gas by upgrading the systems gradually.

Analysts do not give forecasts regarding the development of the situation. But most of them are sure that the European Union is not in a position to refuse Russian energy resources.