The Hessian Economics Minister Tarek Al-Wazir (The Greens) supported the federal government's decision on Thursday to proclaim the second stage of the gas emergency plan.
There is currently no physical shortage of gas in Hesse, said the politician.
"Nevertheless, the situation is serious." He appealed to all citizens and companies to make provisions for the winter now.
Due to the impending lack of gas, Federal Minister of Economics Robert Habeck (Die Grünen) put the second of three stages of the emergency plan into effect on Thursday morning.
The trigger for this is Russia's announcement that it will route significantly less natural gas through the existing Nord Stream 1 Baltic Sea pipeline.
With stage two, energy suppliers could be allowed to terminate existing contracts and demand higher gas prices in the future.
In addition, coal-fired power plants can be connected to the grid again.
A throttling of the gas quantities would only be planned in the third emergency level.
Ewald Hetrodt
Correspondent for the Rhein-Main-Zeitung in Wiesbaden.
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Falk Heunemann
Business editor in the Rhein-Main-Zeitung.
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If it is not possible to fill up the storage tanks by the beginning of winter, the state will have to decide who will still be supplied with gas, said Al-Wazir.
"We can and must prevent this situation." Because such decisions can never be made correctly.
There is an exchange with the Federal Government, the Federal Network Agency and the suppliers and network operators in Hesse in order to keep an eye on the situation on the gas market and to be able to act.
However, the legislative possibilities of the federal states are very limited.
As in all of Germany, the proportion of gas that came from Russia was over 50 percent in Hesse at the beginning of the war, Al-Wazir reported.
But it can be reduced.
"Coal is not an option"
He appealed to all private households, companies, but also to public administration to think about savings potential "without having to shiver".
Several Hessian companies are already in the process of converting their energy supply as much as possible.
The chemical company Evonik, for example, relies on long-distance steam from the Darmstadt waste-to-energy plant at its Darmstadt site.
In the future, heating oil will be used instead of gas in Weiterstadt and Steinau, said a company spokeswoman.
The Hanau-Wolfgang industrial park can obtain 80 percent of the steam it needs from its own coal-fired power plant.
At the same time, Hanau is examining which productions will have to be postponed in the future as soon as gas is rationed.
In the industrial park, for example, Evonik produces lipids that are required for Biontech's mRNA vaccines.
These would now be prioritized, it said.
The Hanau-based technology group Heraeus is also currently trying to find alternative sources of energy.
"Gas plays a major role for us, and not just for heating," says Dietmar Bork, who is responsible for energy management at Heraeus.
Furnaces, for example, would also be operated with natural gas, air would be dried, waste gases would be post-treated, and it would be required as process heat for production processes.
The family business produces, among other things, precious metals and preliminary products for car manufacturers, glass fiber producers and the photovoltaic industry.
The company has been working on its own emergency plan since spring to ensure the energy supply from the next heating season on.
Heating oil in particular is a good substitute for natural gas, which is currently available quickly and can be stored.
On the other hand, it is hardly possible to use electricity because the necessary components, such as transformers, are currently not available.
"Coal is not an option for us at all," says energy manager Bork.
There is simply a lack of suitable incineration systems in the plant for this.
The pharmaceutical company Boehringer has also drawn up its own emergency plans in order to be able to use alternatives to Russian natural gas.
"In most cases, we can bridge bottlenecks over a certain, short period of time from a few weeks to a few months," explains a company spokesman.
The company operates a biomass power plant at the Ingelheim site, other sites would use alternative energy sources.
However, these are “short-term interim solutions”.
"The situation is tense," says Gregor Disson, Managing Director of the Chemical Industry Association.
Gas is the most important energy source, especially for the energy-intensive production of chemical base materials that are required in all branches of industry.
For many products, it is not required as energy, but also as a raw material.
"If the lights go out in our chemical industry, so will everyone else's," warns Disson.
In any case, he expects production costs to rise.
Something similar can be heard from Evonik: "In the future, gas will become a scarcer commodity, which should be reflected in price developments," says the Evonik spokeswoman.
"There has never been a situation like this in Germany," stated Hesse's Economics Minister Al-Wazir.
According to his own statements, he now also expects that the Staudinger 5 hard coal-fired power plant in Großkrotzenburg will not be shut down for the time being, contrary to what was originally planned.
According to Uniper's application, the Federal Network Agency had originally decided
to shut down commercial electricity production in Block 5 by May 2023 at the latest.
In view of current developments, the authorities will probably no longer allow that, said Al-Wazir.