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Substation near Schwerin
Photo: Jens Büttner / dpa
A decision by the Federal Network Agency could ease the situation with rising energy prices: Germany's highest regulatory authority for the electricity and gas market has just announced the new equity interest rates that around 900 companies will receive from 2023 for business with the electricity networks and from 2024 for the gas networks.
The returns are expected to drop significantly - for new systems from currently 6.91 to 5.07 percent and for old systems from 5.12 to 3.51 percent.
This should lead to some relief in the so-called network charges that consumers pay through their electricity bills and which have so far been a major cost factor.
The network charges make up around a quarter of the end customer price for private households.
In 2020, consumers paid an average of 7.50 cents per kilowatt hour for electricity and 1.56 cents for gas.
In 2022, when the higher returns still apply, network charges will rise significantly.
According to calculations by the consumer portal Verivox, they are likely to increase by around 3.7 percent on a nationwide average.
An average three-person household with an annual consumption of 4,000 kilowatt hours would then have to pay around 303 euros net network charges, around eleven euros more than in the current year.
So far, rising network costs have been a factor that drives electricity prices up.
Because of the increase in purchase prices in wholesale by up to 140 percent, many suppliers have already announced juicy tariff increases in the past few weeks.
For some, the prices per kilowatt hour increase by up to 60 percent.
Relief in several places at the same time
The federal government is already trying to relieve consumers by lowering the so-called green electricity levy.
The levy, which will also be added to their electricity bill, will fall from 6.5 to 3.7 cents per kilowatt hour in the coming year.
For an average household, this corresponds to a relief of 112 euros.
And that's not all.
Because the SPD, Greens and FDP, who will probably form the next government, want to lower the surcharge even further in the coming years.
With the simultaneous cutting of grid yields, consumers can now justifiably hope that their electricity prices will fall again by 2023 at the latest.
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According to industry insiders, network operators will get almost two billion euros less in five years from the planned reduction in equity interest rates.
The bottom line is that the additional savings per consumer should amount to EUR 2.40 per year.
For some, the returns are only part of the network charges.
At the very least, however, the cuts in equity interest rates are likely to prevent the fees from rising quite as much - and in the best of cases even falling slightly.
Could there have been more for consumers?
However, there is also criticism that the relief for the end customers is not big enough.
Because the Federal Network Agency originally had even more ambitious plans to cut equity interest rates.
She wanted to reduce the interest rate for new systems initially to 4.59 percent instead of 5.07 and the rate for old systems to 3.03 percent instead of 3.51.
According to a report by energy expert Thomas Wein from the University of Lüneburg on behalf of the green electricity supplier Lichtblick, a reduction to 3.79 percent for new systems and 2.23 percent for old systems would have been possible.
"The Federal Network Agency distributes billions in gifts to corporations and municipal utilities without need," says Markus Adam, legal expert at Lichtblick.
"Apparently the authority buckled before the pressure from politics and the network lobby."
"Completely wrong signal"
In fact, the energy umbrella organization BDEW and the municipal association VKU strongly criticize the drop in yields.
The network agency is sending "a completely wrong signal," they write in a joint statement.
The networks are "the backbone of the energy transition," the associations continue to write.
There is »consensus that they have to be significantly expanded and rebuilt in order to achieve the climate goals«.
That will only succeed if the work is also sufficiently worthwhile for investors.
The falling equity interest rate does not provide enough incentives.
"You can't save the future."
The network agency itself described the planned lowering as exactly right.
"The lower interest rates reflect the lower level of interest rates on the capital markets," said network agency boss Jochen Homann.
Investments in the networks therefore remained attractive.
At the same time, consumers, industry and commerce would no longer be “unnecessarily burdened”.