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Gas storage facility in Rehden: situation aggravated again
Photo: FABIAN BIMMER / REUTERS
Electricity and gas customers will have to prepare for further price increases in the coming months.
Average tariffs for households and industrial customers have increased significantly since the beginning of the year, according to an analysis by the Federal Association of Energy and Water Industries (BDEW).
The reason for this is the procurement costs that the energy suppliers have to pay for electricity and gas, explained BDEW boss Kerstin Andreae.
Those for electricity have quadrupled since the beginning of last year, and those for gas have almost quintupled.
"Due to the long-term procurement strategies of the energy suppliers over several years, the price developments on the wholesale markets only reach the customers with a delay," says Andreae.
"The longer the price level remains high, the more the wholesale prices will be reflected in the tariffs and will also influence them in the long term." The situation on the energy markets has worsened again since the beginning of the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
According to the BDEW analysis, the average current electricity tariff for household customers over the year to date is 37.14 cents per kilowatt hour.
That is 15.5 percent more than the average for 2021. Small and medium-sized industrial customers have had to pay an average of 31.36 cents per kilowatt hour in 2022, almost 50 percent more than last year.
According to this, households in single-family houses with an annual consumption of 20,000 kilowatt hours currently pay an average of 13.77 cents per kilowatt hour for gas - almost twice as much as in 2021, when the annual average was 7.06 cents.
Households in apartment buildings would also have to pay about twice as much.
Andreae called for further relief.
The abolition of the EEG levy on the electricity bill from July cannot cushion the extremely high procurement costs.
For example, the federal government should examine lowering the electricity tax to the minimum permissible in Europe and reducing the value added tax on electricity and gas from 19 to 7 percent.
At the same time, the government should provide more information on how households can use energy more efficiently and thus save electricity and gas.
mike/dpa