The energy crisis, and German universities. (Article in german.)

So this is where we are, at present:

• The Hochschule Koblenz (roughly, Polytechnic Koblenz), will move all lectures online for the time of 4th of December to 8th of January. (In practice, thats about three weeks of teaching.)
• The University of Mainz will close some of their library branches on the weekend.
• The University of the Saarland (which is basically the University of Saarbruecken with a couple of branches) opts to extend the winter holiday.
• The University of Erfurt plans to close all libraries on the weekend and move all teaching around the end of the year to online.

Thats all not great. And students who just went through two years of covid get another shit sandwich. But overall the measures seem to be... not that bad? The best options among all the bad ones available? At least for the time being?

Of course, all these universities externalise some heating costs to the students. If you don't heat a lecture room and move the teaching online, you save money and potentially some students have to pay more for heating their homes. I don't think any of the universities mentioned above does this on purpose, but that doesn't help the most vulnerable students.