Status: 02/15/2023 10:57 a.m
In mid-December, the Bundestag decided to also relieve users of oil, liquid gas and pellet heating systems. Nothing has really happened since then. Only Berlin has set up a “heating cost aid”.
Fully loaded with wood pellets, the truck looks heavy and bulky. The impact on Heribert Müller’s household budget was similar when he ordered the truck’s load, which is now being pumped into his basement, to his home in the Hunsrück: he still had to pay almost 480 euros per tonne, more than double as much as the previous purchase.
It is still completely unclear to him whether the state will take some of the financial burden off him. But if it should be, he finds, looking at the price paid: “If it goes up, then you would have to make sure that the citizens are not overburdened. Otherwise nobody can pay for it anymore.”
Extreme price fluctuations
Heribert Müller is not an isolated case. Anyone who had to fill up with heating oil or load pellets had nerve-wracking days when comparing prices last year. Not only did prices fluctuate greatly, they also did so at an unusually high level. At peak times, a tonne of wood pellets cost more than 800 euros, four times as much as on the same day a year earlier. Heating oil broke the 200 euro mark for 100 liters, which was three times more expensive than on the same day in the year before the Ukraine war. No comparison to the increase in gas prices – although a particular burden for oil and pellet customers.
The German Bundestag decided in mid-December last year that they too should receive state relief like the natural gas recipients, paving the way for a 1.8 billion euro subsidy. Households that can show a heating oil, liquid gas or pellet bill from the past year that shows more than twice the price of what would have been paid in 2021 should get this money. Anything beyond that is reimbursed by the state at 80 percent up to a maximum of 2,000 euros.
The countries should pay out aid
An example calculation: Anyone who ordered 3000 liters of heating oil in Mainz in August 2022 paid 4750 euros for it. The year before, the same amount would have cost only 2100 euros. The difference to twice the price of the previous year is 550 euros. The state reimburses 80 percent of this – in this example, that would be a relief of 440 euros. The states should pay out the money from the federal government.
But this is still largely gray theory. Two months after the political decision in the Bundestag and shortly afterwards in the Bundesrat, it is still unclear exactly what the conditions of the state subsidy should look like. Only Berlin alone has already launched its own “heating cost aid”. A flat rate of 71 euros per 100 liters applies here as a reference value. In Berlin instead of Mainz, the sample customer would even receive 900 euros in financial relief. Because Berlin supports additional costs from as little as 70 percent, and not just for amounts over twice the previous year’s price.
“Campaign gift” for Berliners?
Two weeks before the elections to the Berlin House of Representatives, the application process at the state development bank went online. “Of course, this support package smelled very strongly of an election campaign gift to taxpayers that was paid for with taxpayer funds,” says Alexander Kraus, Chairman of the Berlin Taxpayers’ Association, and sees the Berlin heating cost aid in a number of other Berlin election campaign gifts such as the 29- Euro-Ticket or the “Jugendkulturkarte”, with which similar, nationwide measures are undercut with tax money.
The Berlin electorate, who heat with fossil fuels, did not let anything burn: there are 70,000 oil heaters in Berlin, 7000 applications have already been made in two weeks. Hardly online, there was a technical malfunction, apparently due to the large number of hits on the application form.
Frustrated pellet supplier
Peter Assmann also notes that consumers are keenly interested in finding out how they can get relief in the rest of Germany. He is the managing director of that pellet supplier from Heribert Müller and currently has to step into the breach for the federal government. involuntarily. Because the customers ask him what the federal government or the federal states (except Berlin) do not answer: Which invoice counts for a subsidy? How to research the comparison price in the previous year? Or is there a uniform reference price like in Berlin?
There is “total dissatisfaction, total confusion,” says Assmann. “People just called it out of politics before Christmas. And we are now the ones who have to stand in the way and try to smooth it out, even though we have nothing to do with the settlement.”
Since mid-December, the number of calls on the subject has also increased among the energy advisors at the consumer advice centres. The answer usually: put off. The energy price crisis is hitting many consumers hard, says Thomas Engelke, head of the Energy and Building team at the Federation of Consumer Organizations. He praises the financial aid for households themselves. “Now the whole thing threatens to become a stalemate. It’s annoying.”
dispute over responsibilities
Why hasn’t anything been implemented two months after the decision? The Federal Ministry of Economics refers to the necessary coordination between different ministries and “each with their own responsibilities for the different hardship regulations”. The responsibility for the hardship fund is still being clarified within the federal government.
It is likely to be sobering for many households that there is not necessarily money to be had at the end of the stalemate: ten million households in Germany use heating oil or wood pellets. Hans-Jürgen Funke from the Southwest-Central Association for Energy Trading, which represents the interests of medium-sized fuel and mineral oil traders, estimates that just one in five will perhaps receive state relief. His reasoning: “The hurdles are far too high. Having bought more than double the amount of oil doesn’t hit very many.”
Taxpayers’ Association criticizes “watering can”
From the point of view of the President of the Association of Taxpayers, Reiner Holznagel, the tax money should have been used differently: “It must not be forgotten that the energy price brakes and a large number of support programs cause enormous costs that ultimately have to be borne by the taxpayer.” Since the financing of the Economic Stabilization Fund through debts to the federal budget takes place, the policy is a burden on future generations. “Instead of using the watering can, it would have been better if the state would help citizens and companies in need with targeted measures.”
Two months ago, the “watering can” was filled with almost two billion euros. It remains unclear when it will actually distribute money for the first time via heating oil, pellet and liquid gas households outside of Berlin. The application period for the heating subsidy in the capital ends on June 30th.