Expert expects “unexpected price peaks” for electricity and warns of price caps: “Completely wrong way”
Created: 08/30/2022, 10:13 am
By: Lisa Mayerhofer
Energy expert Marcel Frondel fears that electricity prices will continue to explode in autumn and winter.
At the same time, he warns politicians against relying on price caps.
Essen – The price of electricity in Germany is rushing from one record to the next.
Most recently it was 988 euros per megawatt hour, while at the beginning of the year it was still less than 150 euros.
The energy expert Manuel Frondel therefore warns of possible "unexpected price peaks".
High electricity prices: experts warn of further increases in autumn and winter
"It is to be expected that electricity prices will continue to rise in autumn and winter, because the demand for electricity increases during this time, especially in countries like France, where electricity is used for heating," said the energy expert from the RWI Leibniz Institute for Economic Research
Rheinische Post
from Tuesday.
"If the supply then remains tight, for example if half of the French nuclear power plants continue to fail, or if the supply is even tighter, as with the shutdown of the three remaining German nuclear power plants, the electricity price can reach further unexpected price peaks."
At the same time, Frondel warned against price caps: "Interventions in the market's pricing mechanism" would be "completely the wrong way to react to this," said the energy expert.
“Social hardship should be cushioned as specifically as possible in low-income households.
It would also be conceivable to have another energy price lump sum, as is now being granted in September 2022 and in which low-income households are more favored than wealthy households, since wealthy people have to pay more tax on this lump sum.”
Energy crisis: Chancellor Scholz open to brakes on electricity prices in the EU
But the price cap is finding more and more friends in politics: On Monday, Chancellor Olaf Scholz (SPD) was open to an energy price brake at European level.
Current electricity prices "cannot be justified", said the Chancellor during a visit to Prague.
Southern EU countries such as Spain and Greece have been demanding market intervention for months.
So far, however, they have failed, among other things, because of German resistance.
Scholz emphasized that because of the consequences of the Ukraine war there was now "a great willingness to change something".
He therefore counts on quick decisions.
The Czech EU Presidency has called a special meeting of EU energy ministers in Brussels for September 9, Czech Prime Minister Petr Fiala said.
As a possible solution, he described a decoupling of the electricity price from the gas price, since the energy market “no longer works properly”.
In connection with the energy supply in the coming winter, Fiala also spoke out in favor of longer use of the German nuclear power plants.
(lma/AFP)