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Comment by usrnm | Hacker News Reader

Genuinely curious, what alternatives were there in the 2000s? Did dependency on Russian gas doom German manufacturing or did it provide it 20 additional years of artificial life support?

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Nuclear. The Schroeder government initiated the German nuclear phase-out (which was later reverted and re-reverted by Merkel). But rumor has it that the nuclear phase-out wasn't only motivated by the greens being anti-nuke, but also by Schroeder being interested in pushing gas instead.

Btw., after his chancellorship, Schroeder got a post at the Russian state gas supplier Gazprom.

Germany's gas problem wasn't purely about energy, but the availability of feedstock to produce chemicals.

Natural gas, being 90% methane, is a valuable source of hydrogen.

That's just the energy part of it, German heavy industry needs petroleum-derived products as raw materials.

His direct involvement with the Russian oil and gas sector (and, most likely, influence on their behalf) is a lot more recent than just 'the 2000s' [0][1].

[0] https://www.cleanenergywire.org/news/ex-german-chancellor-sc...

[1] https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gerhard_Schr%C3%B6der#Rosneft

Diversifying just a little bit would go a long way.

When Russia invaded Ukraine suddenly several LNG terminals gained regulatory approval, even though previously those projects were in bureaucratic purgatory for years.

The alternative was to aggressively pursue nuclear power.

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