Enlarge image
Wind farm in Salzgitter, Lower Saxony
Photo:
Julian Stratenschulte / DPA
The northern German non-city states are in favor of dividing Germany into different price zones for electricity in order to ensure more justice.
"If I live or produce where the energy is produced or landed, this energy must also be cheaper there," Lower Saxony's Energy Minister Olaf Lies (SPD) told the "Welt am Sonntag".
The north has been bearing the brunt of the energy transition for years.
Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania's Energy Minister Reinhard Meyer (SPD) even sees a contradiction that needs to be resolved: It cannot be the case that countries that shoulder a large share of the expansion of renewable energies have to cope with the highest electricity prices.
The amount of electricity grid fees burden "end consumers and disadvantages the north German business location."
Schleswig-Holstein's Energy Transition Minister Tobias Goldschmidt (Greens) therefore considers a division into price zones to be "the logical consequence of the energy policy aberration" of Bavarian state governments.
For more than 15 years, they have sabotaged the expansion of power grids and wind power.
It is "simply no longer possible to explain to the people in the north why they have to foot the bill for it".
dpa/sbo