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Wind turbines in the Bavarian Forest
Photo: Armin Weigel / dpa
A good three years ago, the Federal Court of Auditors (BRH) dealt critically with the energy transition for the first time.
According to the Bonn inspectors at the time, the federal government was managing the project poorly.
A lot has happened since then: The climate protests of the Fridays for Future movement have pushed politicians to a faster pace in the fight against global warming.
The grand coalition passed the climate protection program 2030 in a marathon meeting. That was in October 2019. But the Bonn inspectors still don't see Germany on track: neither in saving the climate nor in a sustainable supply of electricity.
This is how the result of the report on the energy transition that was published this Tuesday can be summarized.
"Too little has been done since 2018," commented Federal Audit Office President Kay Scheller when presenting the report.
Both in terms of security of supply and electricity prices, the Federal Ministry of Economics (BMWi) from Peter Altmaier (CDU) is steering the energy transition "still inadequate," the auditors write in the report.
It is increasingly questionable whether the safe supply will continue to be guaranteed.
Worst-case scenario for security of supply
Accordingly, the BRH urgently calls for better monitoring with which the safe production of electricity is monitored.
"A worst-case scenario" has to be examined, in which it is analyzed when various negative influences come together.
Among them, the authority lists, for example, the shutdown of coal-fired power plants, a delayed expansion of renewables and the production of green hydrogen from wind and sun.
The Ministry of Economic Affairs made assumptions that were too favorable in their scenarios.
"The phase-out of coal creates a gap of up to 4.5 gigawatts of secured output, which the BMWi has not yet taken into account when assessing security of supply," notes the Court of Auditors.
Network expansion and storage, network maintenance, network stability and network failures are not sufficiently taken into account.
According to the BRH, dangerous developments were also evident in the "faltering network expansion and limited cross-border exchange capacities".
Last year there was already a critical situation in the German power grid.
Something like this could happen more often in the future, also because the federal government had given too little consideration to the fact that extreme weather events could occur more frequently, which could affect wind and solar power.
The grand coalition is struggling to provide further incentives for the urgently needed construction of more renewable energies.
German households pay the highest electricity prices in Europe
When it comes to electricity prices, too, the Court of Auditors does not let the minister Altmaier, who is responsible for the energy transition, work.
The Ministry of Economic Affairs has not even defined which electricity prices are still economically viable.
Electricity in Germany is more expensive for private customers than almost anywhere else: "They are 43 percent above the EU average," the BRH auditors calculate.
The same applies to commercial customers who consume up to 20,000 megawatt hours per year.
Their prices are also at a record high in Europe.
A completely different picture emerges with large-scale consumers, such as aluminum smelters or copper works with more than 150,000 megawatt hours of consumption.
The prices there are »below the EU average«, according to the BRH.
The BRH predicts that the promotion of electromobility or geothermal heat pumps will continue to increase demand and thus prices.
The reasons for this lie not with the energy industry, but with the state.
"The drivers of the high electricity prices were and are the state-regulated price components," write the BRH officials and include in particular the EEG surcharge.
The share of government burdens in the electricity price is 75 percent.
"The current energy price system with its fees, taxes, levies and surcharges is likely to lead to ever higher electricity prices," explained the BRH President.
It is true that the federal government paid a portion of this out of the tax bag last year.
But that is not enough for the BRH.
The Federal Court of Auditors urges "the system of state-regulated energy price components to be fundamentally reformed."
"The Federal Audit Office sees the danger that the energy turnaround in this form will endanger Germany as a business location and overwhelm the financial strength of electricity-consuming companies and private households."
Kay Scheller, President of the Federal Audit Office
For the President of the Court of Auditors, Scheller, there is a need for action more quickly: "The Federal Court of Auditors sees the danger that the energy transition in this form will endanger Germany as a business location and overwhelm the financial strength of electricity-consuming companies and private households," he said - and reminds us that the acceptance of the The energy transition as a whole is likely to suffer from poor control of the process in the population.
In its statement on the BRH report, the Federal Ministry of Economics praised some improvement. It wants to "review the aspects for its next monitoring report on security of supply and adjust them if necessary," the Court of Auditors quoted a reply from the Altmaier authority. With regard to electricity prices, the BMWi did not want to go into the recommendation of the Federal Court of Auditors in its statement to push ahead with a comprehensive energy price reform, according to the BRH's special report.