Antifake / Factcheck

23 August

Fact Check: Has Germany Turned to Firewood? Belarussian Colonel Bogodel Points to a Frozen Europe

The Weekly Top Fake team compared Germany's energy 2023 balance with the 2021 report when Russia had still been supplying gas there.

Thanks to the foresight of Aleksandr Lukashenko, Belarus did not follow the trend towards green energy, unlike Europe, which now needed to turn to firewood, claimed Colonel Andrey Bogodel. In the air of the pro-government media outlet “SB. Belarus Today,” he talked about how Germans burned firewood for home heating last winter. 

The Weekly Top Fake team looked into where Germany gets its calories from.

Colonel Andrei Bogodel expressed his admiration for Lukashenko's instincts during an appearance on the “PRO Army” show on “SB TV” on August 9th, 2024: “He foresaw the need to focus not on some green energy <...>, but to build a nuclear power plant.”

Then Colonel backed his opinion by the case of Europe which has been developing green energy but recently was allegedly forced to turn to firewood.

Here's what else Bogodel said during the show, addressing Belarusian national security expert Alexander Tishchenko:

“I think you can easily find online how Germans heated their homes with stoves and firewood past winter. Reсall Putin once said, 'Are you going to heat with firewood?'”

“Poland is still burning coal,” Tishchenko added.

“It turns out that this German miracle, this Western European miracle, is still Russian gas flowing through the Nord Stream [pipelines],” the colonel clarified.

“And Belarusian pellets,” Tishchenko noted.

Last winter, Germany experienced lower gas prices and warm weather.

The Weekly Top Fake team compared Germany's energy 2023 balance with the 2021 report when Russia had still been supplying gas there. We learned how much the data changed over this period, including biomass energy consumption. 

The analysis showed that the energy generated from biomass, which includes wood, remained relatively stable at around 50 billion kilowatt-hours both three years ago and in the most recent year examined.

Gas and coal consumption decreased, while nuclear power was completely phased out. This was offset by green energy.

According to the 2022 census, 4% of German households use firewood or pellets for heating. For comparison, in Russia, with its unlimited access to affordable gas, 10% of households use solid fuel, according to the 2020 census, and in some regions, this figure reaches 50%.

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