Who’s Really Paying for Energiewende (and Increasing Natural Gas & Coal Prices)?

June 26th, 2012 by Zachary Shahan

Paul Hockenos of Renewable Energy World had an interesting post recently on who’s really paying for Energiewende (the renewable energy revolution/program in Germany). Paul busts a couple big myths along the way, too.

Here are a few key quotes from the piece, with some commentary from myself:

“While it is true is that the costs of privileging renewable energy in the overall energy mix is reflected in electricity prices, these costs have been sinking for years as planned, and recently even faster than planned because of the plummeting costs of photovoltaic technology. But while the price of clean energy has been steadily declining, the cost of coal has doubled since 2000 and gas has tripled in price, according to Germany’s Statistical Office. What’s made electricity prices shoot up everywhere in the world are the market prices of gas and coal.” (Emphasis mine.) Shhh, no one’s supposed to know that it’s coal and natural gas now drive up electricity prices in Germany (and elsewhere).
“It was one of the first moves of the present Merkel government to exempt large-scale industry from those parts of the Renewable Energy Law (EEG) that indirectly tack the costs of renewable energy generation onto the bills of energy consumers.” (In other words, Big Industry is getting off the hook… and for no legitimate reason, as Paul explains further on in that section.)
“The Prognos Institute found huge differences in the prices that industry, SMEs, and consumers pay for electricity. While the mechanical engineering branch pays 14.75 cents for a kilowatt of electricity in 2011, the steel industry pays only 7.31 cents. Small businesses pay 17.8 cents and private households dish out 25 cents per kilowatt. It’s numbers like this that have associations representing small and medium enterprises up in arms—and their venom isn’t directed at the Energiewende.” Bottom line? Households and small businesses are paying far more than their fair share for electricity. Or, as Paul puts it, “In other words, private consumers and smaller businesses are paying for big industry’s profits.”
And, one final point for the time being: “One more factor (which I’m going to deal with more extensively at another point): The costs charged by the grid operators have also been climbing and, again, the heavy industries get off much easier than the average guy with a toaster.”

Ah, democracy (controlled by big business) at work….

Source: Renewable Energy World
Image Credit: German electricity bill via Shutterstock

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Tags: Germany, Germany Clean Energy, germany electricity prices

About the Author

Zachary Shahan spends most of his time here on CleanTechnica as the director/chief editor. Otherwise, he's probably enthusiastically fulfilling his duties as the director/editor of Solar Love, EV Obsession, Planetsave, or Bikocity. Zach is recognized globally as a solar energy, electric car, and wind energy expert. If you would like him to speak at a related conference or event, connect with him via social media. You can connect with Zach on any popular social networking site you like. Links to all of his main social media profiles are on ZacharyShahan.com.

ThomasGerke

Germany is currently under siege by a massive denounciation campaign aimed at damageing/destroying the broad popular support for a rapid transition to renewables. One part of this campaign is political action that drives up costs without net-benefits/reason for the majority of the population/economy. The other part is a massive media campaign that blames renewables in general and PV in particular as being the sole reason for price hikes. Behind the curtains politicans closly linked to big industry & the conventional energy sector work hard to change the successful laws & regulations in favour of big investors. A move that is designed to protect the marketshare of outdated centralized energy corporations. It’s basicly dirty politics against clean energy.A massive battle over the future of the german energy transition. Will it be slowed down by putting big conventional energy corporations in chage of it OR will the speed increase by leaving individual investors in chage of the transition by giving them the security to put their savings into doing the right thing.Fortunatly the most vicious anti-renewable policy changes are’t easily pushed into legislation by the hardliners… the renewable stakeholders have grown to powerful by now.
- http://cleantechnica.com/ Zachary Shahan
  
  dirty shite, eh?
  - ThomasGerke
    
    Yeah. Nasty and so orchestrated.
    
    It seems it doesn’t work though. According to a recent public opinion poll 90% of the population still think the “Energiewende” is important or very important. An increasing number of people worry that it’s not moving ahead fast enough though.
    Considering older polls I would hope that they blame the current government & the conventional power industry (big four) for this.
    It has truly become a struggle between decentralized renewables with a broad ownership structure or centralization of renewables with a huge marketshare for the big energy corporations.
    As a stark supporter of path number one, I hate to see this conflict making things less efficent and more expensive.
    - http://cleantechnica.com/ Zachary Shahan
      
      Good to hear. And I hope they do pay attention and turn the political system around.
      
      In the US, i know the HUGE majority support solar (~90%), but they don’t pay enough attention to politics to even realize that one party is essentially robbing them any way they can to give more money to the rich, so getting them to pay any attention to energy matters is a pipe dream.