His ministry is pushing ahead with plans for an electricity price brake.
(Photo: dpa)
The gas price brake follows a concept for an electricity price brake, which is to be combined with a profit skimming of the electricity producers. For the electricity and gas consumers, who are supposed to benefit from the two brakes, both feel the same: They get a basic quota of electricity and gas at a subsidized price, everything that shoots up is billed at the high market prices. But that was it with the parallels.
Because while the gas price brake is to be financed simply from the funds of the defense shield of 200 billion euros, the federal government wants to collect the money for financing the electricity price brake from the electricity producers by collecting 90 percent of the so-called “random profits” from some of them. Thats alright. But it’s insanely complicated.
This is because electricity trading only takes place on the exchange in a transparent manner to a certain extent. Contracts that power plant operators conclude directly with large customers or intermediaries are of great importance.
Apart from the contractual partners, no one knows what is in these contracts. And it’s nobody’s business either. It is also not possible to allocate the electricity sold to a specific plant. It is also not known whether the electricity was resold or whether the transaction is for hedging purposes or is speculation.
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It will probably be difficult if not impossible to develop a reasonably coherent form of skimming off profits for the large number of conceivable scenarios.
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So you will have to make do with approximate values, benchmarks and obligations to cooperate, with plausibility checks and auditors’ certificates. There are no limits to the complexity, nor to the development of bureaucracy.
The fact that the whole thing has to be developed under great time pressure only exacerbates the problems. It doesn’t take much courage to predict that many cases of skimming profits will end up going to court.
Unfortunately, the foreseeable problems are not countered by any reliably calculable income. In the end, the federal government will develop an instrument that is flawed and whose usefulness cannot be predicted with certainty. Unfortunately, no alternatives are in sight. It would be unbearable to leave the operators with the chance profits and put electricity consumers in financial distress.
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