Status: 14.10.2021 6:06 p.m.
The EEG surcharge, which increases the price of electricity, will likely decrease significantly in 2022. Otherwise, energy prices currently only know one direction: up. This is also an issue for the future federal government.
For a good 20 years now, green electricity has been subsidized with the EEG surcharge. In the form that the operators of the power grids are obliged to pay the operators of solar and wind systems a guaranteed price. The difference to the market price is compensated for by the EEG surcharge. This is currently 6.5 cents per kilowatt hour and thus makes up around a fifth of the electricity price.
The very latest price increase on the markets has now ensured that the difference to the guaranteed price has narrowed. According to various media reports, the EEG surcharge could therefore fall to 3.72 cents per kilowatt hour from January 2022. This should stabilize the electricity price for the time being – it is unlikely that it will fall immediately, because the lower EEG surcharge is offset by the higher procurement costs that the energy suppliers have to pay for electricity. On Friday, the network operators will announce the details of the calculations.
Altmaier wants to abolish the EEG surcharge entirely
The decrease in the EEG surcharge is also due to the fact that politicians had previously decided to increase the subsidy from the federal budget. Federal Minister of Economics Peter Altmaier of the CDU has been calling for the complete abolition of the EEG surcharge for some time in order to relieve the consumer – the counter-financing could come from the budget or the income from the CO2 levy.
The question of how energy prices will continue is also of great importance for the future federal government. Because this brings together two aspects that are difficult to reconcile: climate policy and social policy. At the presentation of the new joint forecast of the leading economic research institutes, Professor Oliver Holtemöller from the Leibniz Institute for Economic Research Halle said that politics and the population in Germany may not have fully understood “that efficient climate protection policy means that we have to tighten our belts a bit”.
The price should steer – and at the same time burden
Climate protectors should actually be happy about the recent rise in energy prices: heating oil is 76 percent more expensive than a year ago, gasoline almost 30 percent. This means that the price mark-ups on the market are significantly higher than the CO2 levy introduced at the beginning of the year. To put it bluntly: The 16 cents that were fought over in the summer when the Greens called for the CO2 tax to be increased faster and more strongly have long since been overtaken by reality. And anyone who would like a higher price to provide incentives for abandoning fossil fuels such as heating oil and gasoline cannot really have anything against this development.
If it weren’t for the social aspect. Because poor households in particular are being hit hard by the massive price increases in the energy sector. In other countries, there is already talk of state-imposed price caps. Targeted subsidies for Hartz IV recipients are already being discussed.
Is acceptance for the energy transition in danger?
Because of these social aspects, the price development also harbors dangers, says environmental economist Karen Pittel from the Munich Ifo Institute. Permanently rising energy prices could mean that support for the energy transition could decline. Like many other economists, the Ifo researcher hopes that the current price increase will only be of a short-term nature – consumers may have got used to higher prices during this period.
But if, for example, the price of gasoline continues to strive towards two euros, very few motorists would understand if politicians add a little more every year to the CO2 tax. Federal Transport Minister Andreas Scheuer from the CSU has therefore asked the future federal government to think about lowering the energy tax on petrol. The energy tax is currently around 65 cents on a liter of premium petrol and around 47 cents on a liter of diesel.
Taxes and duties play an important role
In fact, the state is already playing an important role in the price development of the various energy sources – through instruments such as the EEG surcharge, the CO2 levy or energy taxes, with value-added tax added in the end. The challenge for the future federal government lies in structuring taxes and duties in such a way that CO2 becomes more expensive, but not energy costs per se. In the words of the FDP environmental politician Lukas Köhler: “We need a CO2 price that makes it clear that in the long term the emission of CO2 will be more expensive and therefore less attractive, but on the other hand we have to think about how we can make electricity cheaper again, especially for the future the lower incomes in Germany. “
Köhler, who is involved as a specialist politician in the exploratory talks of a possible traffic light coalition, does not want to be more specific. What is clear, however, is that it would be counterproductive if the price of electricity rose regardless of which energy source it came from.
The politicians across party lines agree that abrupt price hikes should not be fueled by the state – because this harms the economy, impairs social peace and does nothing for the climate.