Sometimes it must be hard to be an environmentalist, over the last decade the warning over climate change was made and continues to be made with very good reasons. Institutions tend to move slowly but in general, the political parties tried to make inroads to fight climate change. One of the methods to do this in Germany was even though Germany still has many coal fields, to close down the coal fields and use a cleaner alternative – natural gas. Natural gas was plentiful and just north of Germany lies Russia where great amounts of natural gas are found and there is a pipeline system to bring the gas to Germany and the rest of Europe.

In an article by Melissa Eddy of the New York Times News Service, the Economy Minister of Germany, Robert Habeck said Germany will reopen its coal fields to supply electricity and use less natural gas coming from Russia.

At the same time, Gazprom, the Russian supplier of natural gas reduced flows through the Nord Stream Pipeline (the Nord Stream Pipeline 2 is scheduled to go into operations in the coming months). Gazprom noted it was routine maintenance, but with the war in the Ukraine and Russia going on and Europe imposing sanctions on Russia, who knows if maintenance is the real reason.

Last year Russia accounted for 55% of the natural gas imports to Germany, other large suppliers include Norway, the US and United Arab Emirates for 20%.

Linking to dividend paying stocks, every company in the world is always under pressure to do more for the environment and many try. Given there are costs not necessary seen by the consumer for example continuing to meet government regulations, companies try to move forward. Consumers often times expect profitable companies to do more, because they can but profitable companies are profitable for a wide variety of reasons and keeping costs under control is one of them. All companies work within the government framework and sometimes the priority of the government changes which means the company has to change. Change is a constant.

There are more questions than answers, till the next time – to raising questions.