GERMANY has banned hot water and heating in a major city after Russia stopped supplying gas to the country.
Heating in public buildings and swimming pools, as well as lighting in museums, will be turned off in Hanover after tyrant Vladimir Putin‘s decision sent prices skyrocketing.
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City halls will go cold and monuments will be plunged into darkness after the energy giant of the Russian state Gazprom stocks strangled by 20 percent.
The city’s mayor, Belit Onay, said the “imminent gas shortage” meant cutting energy consumption in Lower Saxony’s capital by 15 percent.
The move has already prompted residents to take cold showers as they feel the chill of Putin’s meddling.
Hanover, in the northwest of the country, is the first major city in Europe to be affected by drastic changes. Others are expected to feel the pressure in the coming weeks.
The big shutdown is likely to happen between April and September each year – with no hot water or heating in any public building during these months.
Residents’ thermostats will then be set to just 20C for the rest of the year, although there will be exceptions.
It comes as the German capital Berlin began to turn off the spotlight illuminating its historic monuments as part of a national effort to conserve energy in the face of Putin’s energy war.
“Given the war against Ukraine and the threats to energy policy from Russia, it is important that we be as careful as possible with our energy,” Bettina Jarasch, the city’s chief environmental officer, said Wednesday.
The policy affected six monuments as of Wednesday night and will eventually affect 200 buildings and monuments, along with 1,400 floodlights, over the next four weeks, Jarasch’s office said.
Major landmarks such as the State Opera and Charlottenburg Palace will be affected by the new rules, officials said this week.
GroenLinks’ Jarasch said consumers were among them and said it was “the right thing to do to make a visible contribution”.
Before the war in Ukraine, Germany bought as much as 55 percent of its natural gas from Russia.
It comes as Chancellor Olaf Scholz has launched a national action to save energy, with the EU this week agreeing to cut Russian gas consumption across the bloc.
Turning off the air conditioning, promoting public transport and even pushing for more efficient shower heads are part of the drastic effort to reduce energy consumption in Germany.
Officials have warned that the Kremlin could cut supplies this winter in furious retaliation for the crippling Western sanctions on Moscow for the war.