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Head of the Federal Network Agency: Klaus Müller (archive image)
Photo: Christophe Gateau / dpa
The President of the Federal Network Agency, Klaus Müller, has brought the auctioning of gas consumption rights in industry into play in the event of a gas bottleneck.
"When phasing out coal, we use an auction model to achieve the most efficient shutdown of power plants with economic incentives," said Müller of the "Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung": "I can also imagine such incentives for the industrial sector.
The market knows better than the state where energy can be saved most efficiently.«
Müller did not explain exactly how such a gas auction should take place.
Auction to minimize damage
When phasing out coal, operators are bidding for the amount of government compensation they would get if they shut down their power plants.
The lowest bids per megawatt of switched-off capacity are awarded the contract.
The idea behind this is that the bidders with the lowest bids also incur the lowest exit costs, so the shutdown will hurt them less than other companies.
This could be because they have alternatives, for example.
In the case of gas, the Federal Network Agency is currently conducting surveys in the industry to find out how much raw material the individual companies need and what quantities they consider to be dispensable in an emergency.
There is a high incentive for companies to present their own gas supply as absolutely indispensable - even if there may be alternatives that are more expensive but feasible.
An auction of gas consumption rights could be used to find out how important gas really is to companies.
The greater the damage caused by capping, the higher the bids would be.
In an emergency, the scarce gas would benefit the companies that really need it the most.
In the past few days, a debate has broken out over the question of who will receive preferential treatment in the event of a Russian gas supply freeze.
The federal government's emergency plan provides for three stages: The first stage, the early warning stage, has already been declared.
In the last level, the emergency level, there are bottlenecks that the market cannot resolve itself.
E.on supervisory board chief demands priority for the industry
Then the state would have to intervene.
In this case, it would be conceivable to cut off the gas for industrial customers first.
Private households, on the other hand, are protected for the time being.
This is what the so-called SoS regulation of the EU and the German emergency plan provide for.
The aim of these standards is that people with a gas heater do not have to freeze in winter.
Economic managers such as the head of the supervisory board of the energy giant E.on, Karl-Ludwig Kley, had recently demanded that politicians should think about a reverse order for the gas emergency plan.
That would mean switching off first with private individuals, then with industry.
che/dpa