Basic energy security, citizens’ basic price, basic quota – the names are different, the concept is the same. The state covers the additional costs for a certain amount of gas per household. But the devil is in the details.
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Michael Bauchmüller and Roland Preuss, Berlin
The idea is no longer the youngest; it even predates the war in Ukraine. Twelve days before the Russian attack, economists Sebastian Dullien and Isabella Weber spoke up in a guest article in the Süddeutsche Zeitung. “The state must cap the price of gas,” it said. It makes sense, the two wrote, “to temporarily limit the price of a certain basic quantity of gas per household”. At the time, gas was still comparatively cheap on the wholesale market. In the first seven weeks of the year, before the start of the war, it cost an average of 81 euros to order one megawatt hour of gas for the next day. Today it is more than 220 euros, almost three times as much.