Status: 09/24/2022 5:23 p.m
The northern German non-city states want to divide Germany into electricity price zones. The proposal is directed against the different levels of charges for consumers and primarily against the South, which gets away with it more cheaply.
It is a dispute that has been smoldering between the federal states for some time – but is being rekindled in the current energy crisis. It is about the question of which federal state produces how much renewable energy and how much consumers in the individual federal states have to pay for electricity.
In the dispute, the north and the south are facing each other: the northern German states of Schleswig-Holstein, Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania and Lower Saxony have now spoken out in favor of dividing Germany into different price zones for electricity. In this way, more justice is to be enforced in terms of electricity costs.
The core of the dispute revolves around the amount of the so-called electricity grid fees. Every consumer has to pay this – first to their respective electricity provider, who has to pay the fee to the electricity grid operators themselves. However, these fees vary from state to state, which depends on various factors. According to the Federal Network Agency, these factors include the density of industrial companies in the respective federal state, as well as the population density, but also the “integration costs of renewable energies”.
Consumers should not shoulder the expansion of green energy
And it is exactly the latter that the northern German states insist on. Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania’s Minister of Energy, Reinhard Meyer, criticized the situation in the “Welt am Sonntag” newspaper, saying it cannot be the case that countries that are shouldering a large share of the expansion of renewable energies should have to cope with the highest electricity prices.
The same tenor with Lower Saxony’s Energy Minister Olaf Lies. For years, the north has borne the brunt of the expansion of renewable energies. The SPD politician therefore demanded:
If I live or produce where the energy is produced or landed, this energy must also be cheaper there.
The criticism from Schleswig-Holstein’s energy minister, Tobias Goldschmidt, was more specifically aimed at Bavaria: for more than 15 years, the Bavarian state governments had sabotaged the expansion of power grids and wind power. For Goldschmidt, the division of the Federal Republic into electricity price zones that are fair for consumers is just a “logical consequence” of this “energy policy aberration”.
Highest wages in Schleswig-Holstein
In fact, in all three northern German federal states private households have higher electricity network charges than in Bavaria. According to figures from the Federal Network Agency for 2021, Schleswig-Holstein is the leader: Based on an annual consumption of 3500 kilowatt hours, household customers here usually have to pay more than ten cents per kilowatt hour. Lower fees only apply around the state capital of Kiel.
In most of Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, consumers have to pay nine to ten cents per kilowatt hour. In Lower Saxony, the costs for the fees are quite different: In the north of the state they are mostly five to six cents per kilowatt hour, but also rise to up to nine cents per kilowatt hour in the regions around Hanover.
In Bavaria, according to the Federal Network Agency, seven to eight kilowatt hours are used per household customer, in some areas they are up to six cents and in a few regions less than five cents.
Also in Ranking of the comparison portal Verivox (As of October 2021), consumers in Schleswig-Holstein have to pay the highest fees: With an annual consumption of 4000 kilowatt hours, a household had to pay an average of 410 euros net, in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania it was 355 euros and in Lower Saxony 292 euros. According to Verivox, a household in Bavaria received 274 euros net.
Bavaria sees itself ahead in terms of energy expansion
But in Bavaria nobody wants to hear about electricity price zones. Bavarian finance minister Albert Füracker warned that the “very irritating proposals made by red-green ministers from the north” lacked any technical basis. The CSU politician consistently rejected the allegations from the north: “It is simply wrong that Bavaria would have neglected the expansion of renewable energies.” Bavaria takes the top spot in terms of the proportion of regeneratively generated energy, for example from the sun, water and biomass. Overall, Bavaria is in second place in the ranking of the federal states for the production of renewable electricity.
Leading only in absolute numbers
CSU boss Markus Söder used a very similar argument – and that at the end of August:
According to all the new statistics, we are number 2 for renewable energies in Germany, we are number 1 for the installed capacity of renewable energies and, according to the latest statements from the Federal Network Agency, we are clearly number 1 for the first half of the year when it comes to the expansion of renewable energies.
research of Bavarian Radio showed, however, that Söder’s statement only applies to the absolute figures for the so-called installed capacity – i.e. the maximum capacity that an energy system, such as a wind turbine, can generate. But if you put this size in relation to the area and population of a federal state, Bavaria quickly slips into the middle of the field in a comparison of all federal states. Furthermore, the installed power does not correspond to the actual power that is provided by the operation of an energy system.
Aiwanger is pushing for an electricity price cap
In view of the current energy crisis, Bavaria’s government is pushing for other means of containing rising costs for consumers as far as possible. “We now need a price cap for electricity and gas and the assumption of the additional costs from the federal budget,” said Bavarian Economics Minister Hubert Aiwanger. What doesn’t help now is “a small-scale debate about grid fees and electricity price zones”.