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Price brakes for electricity and gas: when the money will reach tenants

2023-03-02T09:19:14.384Z


The electricity and gas price brake should ensure that energy remains affordable from March 1, 2023. How tenants benefit from the capped prices.


The electricity and gas price brake should ensure that energy remains affordable from March 1, 2023.

How tenants benefit from the capped prices.

Berlin – For consumers, the energy price brakes will take effect on March 1, 2023.

This will make electricity and gas bills cheaper for millions of tenants in Germany;

The whole thing applies retrospectively to January 1, 2023. The electricity price brake and gas price brake are financed from the federal government's defense shield of over 200 billion euros, the so-called "double boom".

It is not yet clear how much the energy price brakes will cost at the end of the day.

That depends on the one hand on the price development and on the other hand on how much the Germans save.

The bottom line, however, will be debt, because the federal government's €200 billion defense mechanism was financed with new loans.

There is only part of the counter-financing from the crisis-related "surplus proceeds" that are siphoned off from electricity producers.

But how do the energy price brakes, which cap the kilowatt hour of gas at 12 cents and the kilowatt hour of electricity at 40 cents, get through to tenants in the first place?

How do the energy price brakes for electricity and gas work for tenants?

The caps already apply to large industrial consumers.

For tenants, the gas price brake will limit the gross price to 12 cents per kilowatt hour from the beginning of March.

This applies to 80 percent of the annual consumption forecast in September.

So if you pay more than 12 cents, the monthly deductions will decrease, reports fr.de.

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The electricity and gas price brake should ensure that energy costs remain affordable from March 1, 2023.

© Marius Becker/dpa/Archive

For each kilowatt hour in excess of 80 percent, customers must pay the price per kilowatt hour specified by the respective provider.

This should give an incentive to save energy: the less gas is used, the lower the consumption, which is above the gas price brake - and the less you have to pay.

The message is also: The energy crisis is not over yet.

With the electricity price brake for private consumers, the price for electricity is limited to 40 cents per kilowatt hour gross.

Here, too, this applies to a requirement of 80 percent of the forecast consumption.

According to current regulations, the energy price brakes expire on December 31, 2023.

An extension up to April 30, 2024 is laid down in the law, but according to the Ministry of Economic Affairs depends on European requirements.

Electricity and gas price brakes take effect from March 1st: What does this mean for consumers?

The good news: Tenants don't have to worry about a thing.

"From March 1, 2023, the suppliers of grid-bound natural gas and heat must credit their customers with a relief amount for each month," says a press release from the tenants' association.

The calculated relief amount is to be distributed evenly over the deductions.

The monthly deductions are reduced accordingly.

In rented houses with central heating, landlords must take the accruing relief into account in the heating bill for the current billing period.

In most cases, the landlords have agreed on the calendar year as the billing period.

The relief will then be passed on as part of the heating cost bill for the billing year 2023. This bill only has to be prepared by the end of 2024, so that

many tenants will not see the relief until the end of 2024

.

Therefore, in certain constellations, landlords are obliged to reduce the advance payments for operating costs this year.

According to the Tenants' Association, this is the case if:

  • the landlord has increased the operating cost prepayments since January 1, 2022 due to rising costs for pipeline-bound natural gas or heat.

  • the landlord has agreed advance payments for pipeline-bound natural gas or heat with the tenant for the first time since January 1, 2022;

    as a rule, this will be a newly concluded tenancy.

  • Ingbert Liebing, general manager at the municipal utility association VKU, said that all companies have been working together with their IT service providers for months to implement the price brakes on time.

    Many customers have already received information letters from their energy suppliers with detailed information on the relief.

    "Even if there are unwanted delays in the implementation of the energy price brakes: All consumers will get their relief."

    Electricity and gas price brake: Energy prices for tenants are currently developing positively

    Kerstin Andreae, general manager at the Federal Association of Energy and Water Industries, said the laws on energy price brakes were so complex that their practical implementation was a "mammoth task".

    IT systems for over 40 million households and thousands of companies would have to be converted.

    The implementation of the relief on the energy suppliers is an absolute novelty.

    In an exceptional situation, the energy industry was assigned the processing of the relief - because the state currently has no legally secure and practicable basis with which it can pay out such price brakes or financial aid directly to the citizens.

    That must change as soon as possible.

    Energy prices are currently developing positively for consumers, said Steffen Suttner, the energy expert at the comparison portal Check24.

    It is expected that the prices for new customers will continue to fall in the coming weeks.

    "Then the price brakes will be used less." However, the development remains dependent on global political events and the filling levels of the gas storage facilities.

    (dpa/jon)

    List of rubrics: © Marius Becker/dpa/Archive

    Source: merkur

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