Johann Tophoff-Kaup, a farmer from Neklade, a village on the Baltic Sea island of Rügen, has long been fighting against the Nord Stream 2 natural gas pipeline. First, he was told that he had to sell his property as a buffer zone surrounding the German end of the pipeline. He challenged the order and erected signs in his wheat fields reading: “No land for Nord Stream 2.”
He was able to save his fields, but now, the 32-year-old is struggling to save his biogas facility, which he has been operating for the last six years. Natural gas from Russia is cheaper than the sustainable energy produced from food waste and slurry. “We talk so much about the shift to renewables,” he says. “And then to depend so heavily on fossil fuels, I find it questionable.”
It’s not just environmentalists who have spent years resisting the project. Many of Germany’s European Union partners, particularly Poland and the Baltic countries, see it as a strategic error since it makes Europe dependent on Russian gas. But no matter how good the arguments may be, not one of them has proven to be a serious impediment to the project. The German government has stubbornly pursued its completion, and now, the two 1,230-kilometer-long pipelines beneath the Baltic Sea from the Narva Bay in Russia to the German town of Lubmin is virtually finished. Only about 150 kilometers still have to be laid…