Renewable energies: EEG surcharge will decrease significantly in the coming year

Renewable energy
EEG surcharge will decrease significantly in the coming year

The EEG surcharge for promoting green electricity will drop significantly in the coming year – but that does not mean that the high electricity prices are all clear.

According to information from the German Press Agency, the surcharge will decrease to 3.72 cents per kilowatt hour in 2022. A billion dollar grant from the federal government also contributes to this. However, the levy is only part of the electricity price. In the industry, it is expected that a falling EEG surcharge will stabilize electricity prices overall – but that they will not fall.

On the other hand, procurement costs that energy suppliers have to pay for electricity, for example, have risen significantly.

The operators of the large power grids want to announce the amount of the EEG surcharge for the coming year this Friday. Without the federal subsidies, the 2022 surcharge would be around 4.66 cents, according to dpa information. In 2021 it will be 6.5 cents – but only thanks to federal subsidies. Otherwise it would have risen sharply.

According to the comparison portal Verivox, the average electricity price for households is 31.38 cents per kilowatt hour in October 2021, which is higher than ever before. Lowering the EEG surcharge to 3.72 cents would lower the current average electricity price by around 11 percent. In a three-person household with an annual consumption of 4,000 kilowatt hours, the relief would be around 132 euros.

“The lowering of the EEG surcharge does not mean, however, that the electricity prices for customers will automatically fall,” said Thorsten Storck, energy expert at Verivox. Because at the same time the procurement costs of the electricity suppliers have risen significantly and there are also increases in the network usage fees. “We are therefore assuming that electricity prices will hold their current record level in the coming year or at least will not drop noticeably.” If there were no clear impulses from the new federal government such as the abolition of the EEG surcharge, German households would continue to pay the world’s highest electricity prices.

In order to relieve electricity customers, politicians have long been discussing abolishing or reducing the EEG surcharge. This is to be financed by increasing income from CO2 pricing in the transport and heating sectors. The future of the EEG surcharge and the general rise in energy prices are likely to play an important role in the negotiations on a new federal government – as is the expansion of green electricity from wind and sun.

According to calculations by the comparison portal Check24, the falling EEG surcharge will reduce the burden on all private households in Germany by around 4.2 billion euros. However, there is a risk of increasing electricity prices due to rising network charges. The price of electricity on the exchange is also at a record level.

There are several reasons for the EEG surcharge, which will decrease in the coming year. According to an analysis by the Agora Energiewende think tank, the high gas, coal and CO2 prices have led to a sharp rise in the price of electricity on the exchange. This means that far less money is needed from the EEG account to compensate for the differential costs of renewable energies – renewable energies generate higher revenues on the market and the necessary funding amounts are reduced. In addition, green electricity plants from the early years, which would have received comparatively high remuneration, have gradually reached the end of their 20-year funding period since this year: “The EEG’s cost backpack is getting smaller and smaller.”

Agora also assumes that due to increased procurement prices and probably a slight increase in network charges, a decrease in the EEG surcharge in 2022 will not be sufficient to fully offset these opposing effects.

dpa