BERLIN — Energy Minister Katherina Reiche has ordered the entire federal ministry to complete the energy transition on foot, announcing that every planned power line will be walked by officials carrying the cables themselves, one metre at a time, until the grid is finished.
«The transformation is correct, but it needs time and money,» Reiche said at a ceremony where she laced a pair of standard-issue walking boots. «So we will supply the time personally and the money through shoe leather.» The first shift departed at dawn, walking backwards along the route of a planned north-south corridor, because, as Reiche explained, «the transition must not lose sight of where it came from.»
The ministry has been reorganised into walking columns. Officials who previously processed permits now carry coils of copper on their shoulders. A canteen in Berlin has been converted into a boot-repair station. Reiche herself walks the final kilometre of each day's route, and has required her deputies to do the same, in the same direction, at the same pace.
Critics who claim the transition is being slowed have been invited to join the walk. «Their criticism is nonsense,» Reiche said, tightening a strap. «Let them carry a transformer for a week and then tell me about speed.»
By next spring the ministry expects to have walked the equivalent of one full grid connection, at which point it will begin again, this time carrying the cables in the other direction, to demonstrate that the Energiewende is not a one-way street.