The next bad news for consumers: The municipal utilities will increase the gas price by 25 percent on January 1st.
Electricity rises by six percent.
Munich - record inflation, rising cost of living - and now the heating price hammer: The Stadtwerke (SWM) announced on Tuesday that the tariff for natural gas will be increased on January 1, 2022. The increase is juicy. The price increases by around 25 percent depending on the supply tariff. In other words: an average household in Munich * with an annual consumption of 20,000 kilowatt hours will pay around 23 euros more per month, according to Stadtwerke. Projected over the year, this makes 276 euros. According to the Federal Statistical Office, almost half of all 42.8 million apartments in Germany are heated with gas.
The rise in electricity costs will not be quite as drastic.
The average household in Munich (two people, 2500 kilowatt hours / year, M-Strom private compact) will pay around four euros more per month from January, according to the municipal utilities.
This corresponds to an increase of six percent.
Gas is not only used for heating and hot water, but also to generate electricity.
The last increase in the tariff for natural gas dates from January 1, 2019. At that time, the price jump of 6.5 percent was comparatively moderate.
Around 200,000 SWM customers were affected in 2019.
The municipal utilities do not want to say whether this order of magnitude is still correct: "These are competition-relevant figures," says a spokesman.
Rising wholesale prices for natural gas are troubling utilities
The rising wholesale price of natural gas is currently causing problems for energy suppliers. The city utilities write that it rose by around 440 percent between January and October. On the one hand, the trigger is the global economic recovery after the corona slump. The big economies and companies needed more energy to ramp up their production, and they would also build supplies for security and for the approaching winter. As a result, demand increases. The majority of SWM's natural gas comes from Russia, the rest comes from Norway and the Netherlands. Another reason for the hefty tariff increase: From January 1, 2022, the CO2 price for fossil fuels will rise from 25 to 30 euros per ton, which makes energy prices even more expensive.
As a result of this development, the municipal utilities see their corporate strategy of consistently relying on the expansion of renewable energies as confirmed. In addition, the company is building on long-term energy procurement. The significant price increase for natural gas is therefore lower than the increases announced by other suppliers, says Stefan Tauber, head of SWM -versorgung GmbH: “Actually, the market situation was already in spring 2020 such that we should have increased the prices. But we did not do that so that the Munich-based company can get through the difficult Corona * situation well. ”The significant price increase in recent months has left the company with no other choice. Nevertheless, the municipal utilities would continue to value a fair price / performance ratio. - Klaus Vick - *
tz.de/muenchen
is an offer from IPPEN.MEDIA
Our Munich newsletter informs you regularly about all the important stories from the Isar metropolis.
Sign up here.
