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KAUB, Germany — Grandiose plans to shift cargo from roads to rivers don’t matter much if Western Europe’s most important waterway is too shallow for ships to pass.
Water levels on the Rhine, Europe’s great inland river connecting the mega-ports of Rotterdam and Antwerp with the industrial heartland of landlocked Germany and Switzerland, are sharply low, making it difficult for carriers to transfer coal, components, chemicals and other goods to factories and power stations along the river.
This is an urgent problem for major industries, but also hinders EU plans to increase the movement of goods on waterways by 25 percent by 2030 and by 50 percent by 2050 as part of efforts to reduce emissions from the transport sector – lagging behind when it comes to meeting climate goals.
Persistently low rainfall meant the Rhine’s depth dropped to 49 centimeters on Sunday at the measuring tower in Kaub, a bottleneck on the 1,200-kilometre river that lies between Wiesbaden and Koblenz and is widely regarded as the most important point for navigators judging depth.
“If it stays dry, then we will have a big problem,” said Mark Daniel Heinz, head of the secretariat of the International Commission for the Protection of the Rhine (ICPR), an organization through which countries coordinate efforts to reduce pollution.
Over coffee on the first floor of the ICPR office overlooking the Rhine in Koblenz, just meters from where it meets the Moselle, Heinz said it would now take sustained torrential rains to increase the depth significantly.
No such rain is forecast for the next two weeks and levels at the Kaub choke point are already lower than they were at the same point in 2018 before October’s historic low of 25 centimeters.
The water was so low then that the river was closed to shipping traffic for weeks, forcing companies to divert their cargo to rail and road lines. But this is expensive and inefficient, as hundreds of trucks or wagons are needed to handle cargo that can be loaded onto a single barge.
At a time of high inflation, a global supply chain crisis and a looming gas crisis, the low levels of the Rhine River are another headache for Germany Inc. Energy companies are already warning of reduced output at coal-fired power stations due to problems transporting coal upriver. In 2020, researchers at the Kiel Institute for the World Economy said that a month of low levels on the Rhine River would reduce about 1 percent of Germany’s industrial output.
Typically, Heinz said, the Rhine reaches its highest water levels in the spring and early summer and its lowest point in the fall, but that pattern is changing rapidly. A record low in 2018 was followed by unusually high water levels last summer, which forced a temporary suspension of shipping in certain areas.
Low rainfall and melting mountain glaciers are two causes of the extremes.
This year is shaping up to be another record breaker.
An inland vessel sails along the Rhine River as people stand on the bank next to a partially dry riverbed in Düsseldorf, western Germany, on July 25, 2022. | Ina Fassbender/AFP via Getty Images
Along the Upper Rhine to Mannheim, the water level is so low that it is classified as an event that occurs statistically once every two to five years, but from Mannheim to Duisburg, the stretch that includes both Kaub and Koblenz, the water already is at a typical depth seen only once every five to 10 years.
“On the Dutch-German border it can already be classified as a ‘rare’ event that can be expected every 10 years,” Heinz said of the situation further downstream.
This is at least two months before the Rhine usually reaches its lowest level.
Breaking the bottleneck
Making its way across Europe, the Rhine is as much a part of mythology in Germany, wrapped up in national identity as sausages and crystal clear beer. Lorelei Rock, just a few kilometers downstream from Caub, is where, according to legend, a maiden threw herself into the water and became a wailing siren.
But apart from the mystique, summer houses and castles that dot the forested sides of the valley, the river is also a critical economic artery.
Each year, more than 300 million tons of goods are transported on the Rhine between Basel, where Switzerland, Germany and France meet, and the North Sea. About 80 percent of all water freight in Germany – through which the Elbe, Ruhr and Danube also flow – is carried on the Rhine.
But once the water level drops below 40 centimeters in Kaub, it becomes uneconomic to transport goods. Standing by the Kaub gauge on Friday — the display dropped below 55 centimeters on the tower after a day of sweltering temperatures — POLITICO could already see rocks jutting into the water as shallow-draft barges drifted by.
“When the water levels are low, it is usually not possible to load as much on the ships as usual,” said Dominik Roesch of Germany’s Federal Institute of Hydrology. “Accordingly, the economic efficiency decreases and [freight] switches to road or rail transport.
As part of efforts to deal with low water levels, the German government wants to remove rocks and gravel from some chokepoints, including the Kaub, but this poses environmental problems and will require regular maintenance.
Instead, shippers must continually calculate the weight they can move based on low-water readings on gauges like the Kaub.
“The bigger the ship, the less it can carry – relatively speaking,” said Lenny van Torenburg, head of navigational technical issues for Dutch shipping group KBN, calculating the impact of the 47cm water level.
“The big ships carry about 6,000 tonnes and they can now only take 800 tonnes – that’s less than a sixth,” she said.
Industrial headache
This is a major strategic issue for industrial giant BASF, whose global headquarters and largest chemical production site in the world are in Ludwigshafen, about 100 kilometers upstream from Kaub and directly across the Rhine from Mannheim.
Valeska Schössler, a spokeswoman for BASF, said production was not yet affected by water levels in the Rhine, but in the next two weeks the depth could drop to 35 centimeters. “Some types of ships can no longer be used and will stop sailing; everyone else will sail with reduced loads,” she said.
After record lows in 2018, Schössler said BASF had agreed on a six-week forecasting service with Germany’s Federal Institute of Hydrology to help it plan ahead, and had chartered vessels suitable for low-water navigation.
It has also ordered new, wider vessels capable of operating in extremely shallow waters. For example, the Gas94 vessel entered service last year, which can carry natural gas even when the water level reaches 30 centimeters in Kaub, Schoessler said.
But without significant rainfall in the coming weeks, water levels could drop well below that.
“I’m noticing that nowadays — since about 2018 — we’re more often dealing with lower low water and higher high water,” Van Torenburg said. They also happen at less predictable times, she said, pointing to last summer’s high water: “You can’t count on it anymore, and that’s definitely a consequence of climate change, I think.”
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