Landwärme insolvency

In October, I was mainly preoccupied with the insolvency of Landwärme. In the middle of the month, I had actually retired to the countryside for a week to work on my annual report. But right at the beginning of this week, the market area manager THE terminated the Landwärme Service balancing groups without notice. This basically took the insolvency proceedings to a new level. I then had daily phone calls, emails, WhatsApp messages and text messages with market participants. Landwärme said in press releases that the whole process was on the right track and that the cancellation of the sister company's balancing groups was not a problem. Everyone, really everyone I have spoken to, has a completely different view. There is a lot of uncertainty, a lack of transparency and the suspicion that Landwärme is playing dirty. Particularly as Landwärme - and this has been confirmed many times - seems to have largely stopped communicating with its contractual partners. The first lawsuits are now pending before the courts. You can read all about it in the Topic of the Month.

A topic that keeps me on my toes is the sometimes bitter debate between the ‘gas industry’, i.e. institutions that see a major role for molecular energy sources in a ‘net zero world’, and institutions that see it quite differently. ‘Gas Lies’ was the title of a dossier in DIE ZEIT, a leading German weekly newspaper, which sums up this controversy in its title. However, I also used my short report on it to address the accusation that I was being too ‘harsh’. The accusation was that in the last issue, I had written negatively about the study ‘CCS: A misguided approach (Irrweg CCS)’ without discussing its content. For me, the facts are somewhat different, but I take the accusation seriously. It shows me how important it is to maintain a decent culture of debate. Partly because we are not doing this, we are in danger of driving the energy transition against the wall, to put it crudely.

Dr. Heiko Lohmann
Freelancer

E-Mail +49 30 8824005

Topic of the month: Landwärme insolvency

I already reported on the status of the Landwärme insolvency in the last edition. To be precise, insolvency proceedings have not yet been formally opened. Landwärme applied to the Charlottenburg district court in Berlin to open insolvency proceedings at the beginning of August. On 13 August, the court ordered provisional self-administration. Landwärme plans to apply for the formal start of insolvency proceedings in self-administration on 1 November. Contrary to what I wrote in the last issue, however, this also means there will be no creditors' meeting already on 4 or 5 November. I was clearly misinformed.

A new development in October was THE's cancellation of Landwärme Service's balancing groups. This caused excitement and uncertainty for various reasons, more on this in a moment. Two other topics in the context of insolvency are also occupying many market participants.