In view of the current energy crisis and the severe turbulence surrounding the Uniper electricity group, demands are being made that the Free State should return at least parts of the power plant parks in Bavaria to the public sector. “The energy supply is a central component of services of general interest,” says the parliamentary group leader of the Greens, Ludwig Hartmann. “The state government should ensure that the largest possible parts of it are returned to the Free State or municipal associations.” Hartmann is targeting the large hydroelectric power plants. Until the 1990s, they mostly belonged to the Free State and were combined in Bayernwerk AG. Then they were privatized under the then Prime Minister Edmund Stoiber (CSU), and today they are largely owned by Uniper. “The current energy crisis shows once again what an immense political mistake Stoiber’s privatizations were,” says Hartmann. “I expect Prime Minister Markus Söder to correct him.”
Uniper operates around a hundred hydroelectric power plants on the Danube, Lech, Isar and Main. Together they have an output of almost a thousand megawatts. That corresponds to two-thirds of the output of the Isar 2 nuclear power plant. According to Uniper, the plants produce around 4.8 billion kilowatt hours of electricity a year. That is about as much as 1.6 million average households consume in a year and corresponds to about six percent of the electricity requirement in Bavaria. Hartmann justifies his initiative not only in terms of energy policy. But also with flood protection and water ecology. “The Free State and thus the general public invest many millions of euros every year in new flood protection projects and the renaturation of our rivers,” he says. With the return from hydropower, which has so far gone to the plant operators, he could invest a lot more money in these tasks.
The reversion right applies to up to 270 power plants
According to Hartmann’s ideas, the retransfer should be made possible by the so-called escheat right, which is derived from the heritable building right. It is linked to the concession contract for the respective hydropower plant and can be exercised by the Free State upon its expiry. The concession contract for the Upper Bavarian Walchensee power plant, for example, expires in 2030, and the Free State of Bavaria announced to Uniper in 2020 that it wanted to renegotiate the concession contract. On the Lech, the first of a total of twelve notifications will end in 2034. According to Hartmann, the Free State could exercise its right of reversion to around 270 hydroelectric power plants, although the time perspectives for this would be very long-term in some cases. Experts also point out that the legal constellations are extremely complicated in some cases and that a replacement of the systems or a buyback would therefore be the most promising.
Hartmann’s move is viewed with mixed feelings in the energy industry. “Of course, one can say with good reason that the privatization of the energy sector and thus of hydropower was a mistake,” says Detlef Fischer from the Association of Bavarian Energy and Water Industries (VBEW). “But that’s not new, many saw it that way back in the 1990s.” Fischer himself does not want to condemn Stoiber’s privatization policy because “there are just as many good arguments for it as against it,” as he says. From his point of view, in the end it even “doesn’t matter at all who operates the systems”. Reliable political framework conditions are much more important – and long-term ones at that. “Energy policy is generational policy, not day-to-day politics,” says Fischer. “You can’t even advocate privatization and then nationalization again. Just as you can’t be in favor of phasing out nuclear power and then back to extending the operating life. No company can do that and also no national economy.”
Uniper warns of “expropriation”
The Federation of Nature Conservation is also demanding a clear plan for the hydroelectric power plants, for example on the Lech. “The Free State must finally think about how the river will be managed in the future,” says Thomas Frey, regional officer for Swabia. Frey supports Hartmann’s proposal that the Free State or municipal associations should in future operate hydroelectric power plants themselves, simply with a view to ecological aspects. At the moment, he says, the main focus on the Lech is on the economic yield – which Uniper naturally sees differently. When asked by SZ, the group writes that the company sees the goals of “energy security, flood protection and ecology” mentioned by Hartmann as maxims for its actions anyway. According to a brochure, the group is building fish ladders on the Lech, ensuring safe migration of eels on the Main and pursuing a mowing concept on the Middle Isar Canal.
Uniper has particularly sharply criticized Hartmann’s public considerations, in return for a state rescue of the ailing gas supplier, returning the hydroelectric power plants on the Lech to the public sector earlier than planned. An “expropriation”, as Uniper calls this idea, would be “neither understandable nor justified”. The group trusts the Free State that reversion or re-licensing will be decided at the appropriate time in an orderly process that weighs up all legitimate interests.
consequence of the privatization policy
According to the Free State’s investment report from August 2021, Bavaria held just 1.09 percent of the shares in the energy company Eon – the tiny remainder of what were once extensive industrial holdings. Especially in the 1990s and at the beginning of the new millennium, the state government under Stoiber financed its investments with the help of privatizations. The billions in proceeds were used to finance, among other things, the “Offensive Zukunft Bayern” and the “High-Tech-Offensive”.
In the early 1990s, the state of Bavaria sold its shares in the aerospace group DASA and Rhein-Main-Donau-AG. The state majority stake in the energy provider Bayernwerk AG was initially absorbed by the conglomerate Viag, which in turn merged with Veba to form Eon in 2000 – as part of the largest merger of companies in German economic history at the time. In the course of this merger alone, Bavaria sold shares worth 3.1 billion euros. At that time, the course of privatization was largely supported by the parties represented in the state parliament. The pace and use of the proceeds were particularly controversial.
At the beginning of the week, Klaus Josef Lutz, head of BayWa and president of the Bavarian Chamber of Industry and Commerce, expressed doubts about the privatization policy in the SZ. In view of the problems with the energy supply, one has to ask oneself today whether this made sense.