The traffic light aims to better protect consumers against price fluctuations.
(Photo: dpa)
Berlin Insurance is designed to protect electricity and gas customers if their energy provider goes bankrupt and they are caught by the more expensive basic service. “All energy providers should have to secure their commitments to customers in a binding manner, for example via an industry fund or insurance contracts,” said Michael Kruse, energy policy spokesman for the FDP parliamentary group, the Handelsblatt.
“In the event of insolvency or delivery problems, all customers can rest assured that their energy contracts will be fulfilled on the agreed terms and that there is no risk of sudden price jumps,” he added.
In practice, according to Kruse’s ideas, it could work like this: If a contract is terminated or insolvency occurs, the customers slip into the basic service and are reimbursed the difference to the previous contract over its term by the insurance company or by an industry fund, as long as they don’t have another, cheaper one find providers.
“In the event of insolvency or delivery problems, all customers can rest assured that their energy contracts will be fulfilled on the agreed terms and that there is no risk of sudden price jumps,” said Kruse. In the current hectic market situation, these steps would “lead to more trust, reliability and predictability on all sides and thus strengthen competition in the energy market,” argues the FDP politician.
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Kruse’s proposal meets with the approval of the coalition partner SPD: Electricity customers need reliability, said Nina Scheer, climate protection and energy policy spokeswoman for the SPD parliamentary group, the Handelsblatt. “There is therefore a need for precautionary measures, for which insurance is also an option,” added Scheer.
Plans also provide for new basic services for commercial customers
FDP politician Kruse is also in favor of energy suppliers being obliged to pass on the full amount of tax and levy reductions to customers. Kruse also reaps the approval of the coalition partner SPD for this: “It would make sense to have an obligation to pass it on,” said SPD politician Scheer. So far, the transfer is not required by law.
After all, Kruse wants to develop a new basic supply for commercial customers and bulk buyers. So far, the fallback solution via the basic service has only applied to private customers. Companies, on the other hand, have to procure gas and electricity individually if their provider fails.
“Instead of a replacement supply with prices to be negotiated individually, there should also be a basic supply for commercial customers for electricity and gas, whose prices are published transparently,” Kruse demands.
With their proposals, the coalition politicians are reacting to the upheavals on the energy market. In the past few weeks, dozens of energy suppliers have gone bankrupt or stopped supplying their customers in breach of contract.
The reason for this is the price jumps on the electricity and gas markets. For years, many suppliers had done well by procuring electricity and gas wholesale at short notice and selling it to their customers. However, in times of sharp increases in wholesale prices, this business model no longer proves to be sustainable.
Hundreds of thousands of customers ended up in the more expensive basic service of their regional provider in the past few weeks. As a rule, these are the municipal utilities. Some basic suppliers have switched to accepting the new customers into a second, newly created and more expensive basic supply tariff.
Habeck has a reform proposal drawn up
Federal Economics Minister Robert Habeck (Greens) recently announced that his house would work out a reform proposal for the energy market. “The collapse of some discounters in the electricity and gas market and the associated transfer of many customers to the basic service is an enormous social hardship,” Habeck said. The speculation of the low-cost providers on “eternally low prices” on the electricity exchange is “not a resilient business model,” he said. The system must at least become more transparent.
Oliver Krischer, Parliamentary State Secretary in the Federal Ministry of Economics, recently announced that there should be uniform tariffs in the basic service in the future so that new customers do not pay twice or three times as much as existing customers. In addition, the termination of gas or electricity deliveries should in future have to be announced several months in advance so that consumers can look for a new supplier in peace.
The energy industry rejects uniform tariffs in the basic supply. It is in the interest of all customers if the basic suppliers can react to unexpected new customers in the basic supply with the associated extreme procurement costs for electricity, said the general manager of the Federal Association of the Energy Industry (BDEW), Kerstin Andreae. “The federal government must ensure that.”
More: Battle for natural gas – How Germany wants to save the supply.