After the double boom announced by Federal Chancellor Olaf Scholz in autumn to mitigate the explosion in energy prices, Munich households are now in for a triple boom: In three days, on January 1, 2023, the prices of Stadtwerke München (SWM) will rise. for the three most important energy sources gas, electricity and district heating to unprecedented heights.
In the case of natural gas, the burden for the average household with an annual consumption of around 20,000 kilowatt hours increases from the previous 159 to 307 euros per month, which means additional costs of 1776 euros per year. The prospects are similar for electricity, where the load more than doubles. Previously, a two-person household with an annual consumption of 2500 kilowatt hours paid 752.53 euros per year, but now 1675.67 are due. For the average household, the additional load from these two energy sources alone costs around 2700 euros a year.
However, some relief is in sight. The federal government’s gas and electricity price brakes will probably come into force in the spring and take effect retrospectively at the beginning of the year. Stadtwerke München assure that the relief will then be passed on to customers “in full”. The core of the state gas price brake is a cap of 12 cents per kilowatt hour for gas and 9.5 cents for district heating – but only for 80 percent of consumption. The electricity price brake is capped at 40 cents for 80 percent of last year’s consumption. The rest of the electricity consumption is calculated by the municipal utility at 61.89 cents per kilowatt hour, and then at 51.89 cents on April 1st.
The municipal utilities are co-financing the electricity price brake
To a certain extent, the municipal utilities are financing the electricity price brake themselves – by skimming off the profits from their wind farms as decreed by the federal government. Since this levy will only come in December instead of September as planned and will not apply retrospectively, the municipal utilities will reduce the electricity price by 10 cents per kilowatt hour as of April 1, 2023, “even if SWM’s electricity sales will temporarily work at a loss as a result”. , according to a statement. However, the savings for the average household will only amount to around 50 euros a year.
But that’s not all: the prices for district heating are also rising, and not too little either. The public utilities recently emphasized that a price jump of 74 percent would have been necessary when they raised district heating prices by 17 percent on October 1, from 153.70 to 180.32 euros per megawatt hour. And as a precaution, they pointed out “that energy prices will continue to rise and that SWM will not be able to limit these increases to this extent in the future”.
In fact: The working price for district heating, which is based on consumption, will increase from 162 to 210 euros per megawatt hour on January 1, 2023. The Stadtwerke have thus quadrupled the district heating price within two years, as the left-wing faction in the city council criticizes. Group leader Stefan Jagel, who has repeatedly criticized the public utility company’s pricing and information policy, considers this approach to be unacceptable. In Munich, people are now paying the highest prices for environmentally friendly energy from the pipe – although the state price brake is of course also in place for this.
The next most expensive city for district heating next year will be Frankfurt am Main, with 164 euros per megawatt hour. In Hamburg, the price rose from 52 to 106 euros, in Leipzig from 74 to 140 euros. Jagel: “SWM’s price formula does not reflect the true costs of district heating generation.” So he suspects that the municipal utilities are asking the Munich residents to pay excessively.
The company admits that the price of electricity nationwide is in the upper range
The municipal utilities have now responded to these and similar allegations. On their homepage, they present the recent price development. And they admit that they are now in the upper range for electricity nationwide. “The Stadtwerke regret that very much,” it says, even if other electricity suppliers “have similarly high or even higher prices”.
The municipal utilities have “significantly reduced” the weight of fossil fuels in the new contracts, as they explain. Geothermal energy and the incineration of waste and sewage sludge are now also taken into account. And the share of renewable energies in district heating is increasing, by 2030 it should be 70 percent. The geothermal energy at the southern thermal power plant, Europe’s largest such facility, has been feeding energy into the grid since 2021, but has so far mainly worked in test mode. In the coming year, it will switch to control mode and pump more cheap energy into the grid.