Germany’s proposed ‘green gas’ quota could preserve the network households are meant to leave

Germany’s Economy Ministry is preparing a “green gas” quota requiring suppliers to blend biomethane, hydrogen or other alternative gases into the network. Newly public framework points would start at just 1% in 2028, rise gradually to 100% in 2045 and let companies make compensatory payments when they miss the target.

CORRECTIV’s central objection is not that every alternative gas is useless. It is that a blending mandate can preserve the business case for gas boilers and pipelines without establishing where enough low-carbon gas will come from, what it will cost or how much emissions it will actually avoid. The paper reportedly supplies none of those numbers and does not identify who would enforce the quota.

Scarcity matters. Hydrogen and biomethane are likely to be most valuable in industrial processes that are difficult to electrify. Using them to keep millions of household boilers operating creates competition for limited supply and can make heating more expensive. Biomethane and hydrogen are also not automatically climate-neutral: their impact depends on feedstocks, methane leakage, electricity sources and production pathways.

The gas industry has promoted such a quota for years. The alignment of the proposal with that lobbying does not by itself prove improper influence, but the distribution of benefits is clear. Network operators and suppliers retain customers and assets for longer; households carry fuel and infrastructure costs; the government postpones a politically difficult decision about which gas grids should be retired.

The escape-payment provision makes the environmental claim weaker still. A binding quota at least forces physical substitution. A system that permits suppliers to pay when alternatives are unavailable risks becoming a levy attached to continued fossil-gas use. The practical test should be comparative: whether the quota cuts emissions and household costs more reliably than heat pumps, district heating and planned network decommissioning. The framework, as reported, has not yet supplied that case.