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Wind turbines in Brandenburg (2019): Funding in future entirely from tax revenues?
Photo: Patrick Pleul / dpa
Federal Minister of Economics Peter Altmaier (CDU) proposes a system change in the promotion of green electricity.
The EEG surcharge, worth billions, that electricity customers pay should be completely abolished in the medium term, according to the Ministry of Economic Affairs.
The department is working on a proposal for future EEG financing.
Specifically, the aim is to finance the promotion of renewable energies from systems that will be commissioned from 2022 through tax money.
Such a "system change" is necessary in order to sustainably stabilize electricity prices and to make progress with sector coupling.
Corresponding considerations by the Ministry of Economic Affairs became known as early as spring 2020.
According to calculations by the comparison portal Verivox, the elimination of the levy would suddenly reduce the average electricity price for private consumers in Germany by a good quarter and an average family with an electricity consumption of 4,000 kilowatt hours would reduce the burden by EUR 309 gross.
According to the Renewable Energy Sources Act (EEG), green electricity from wind and sun is promoted.
Producers receive a fixed remuneration.
The cost of funding under the EEG is around 30 billion euros per year.
However, the federal government is using part of the CO2 pricing introduced at the beginning of the year in traffic and buildings to stabilize the EEG surcharge.
The CO2 price will rise steadily in the coming years, from 25 euros to 55 euros in 2025. A Europe-wide emissions trading system is already in place for industry.
The black-red coalition had agreed in the course of the EEG amendment to define a further expansion path for renewable energies in the first quarter of 2021.
The background to this are new EU climate targets.
Above all, the SPD-led Environment Ministry wants significantly higher expansion targets.
Altmaier does not want any further increase in the EEG surcharge.
What is also central to the negotiations is what the assumptions for future electricity demand will look like.
So far there have been differences in the government.
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fdi / dpa