The industry agreed: less intervention in the energy market.
(Photo: Marc-Steffen Unger for Handelsblatt)
Berlin The free market in energy has always been an illusion. So it almost seems a bit presumptuous when, of all people, representatives of that industry, who have just benefited from spectacular government bailouts, call for less interference from the state at the Handelsblatt Energy Summit.
Certainly, in no other year has there been so much political intervention as in 2022: companies were nationalized, the gas surcharge came and went, was replaced by the electricity and gas price brake, not to mention the skimming off of so-called excess profits and the solidarity levy on the income from oil and gas companies. These measures are temporary and were a reaction to war, crisis and inflation.
The industry is now appealing to the federal government that this should not become a habit. Besides the pharmaceutical industry, there is no other market that has always been subject to such massive regulations as the energy market.
Ever since the “liberalization” in the late 1990s, the energy world has lived in this illusion of a free market. Where previously there were clearly defined market areas and state-determined prices, companies should enter free competition and thus ensure lower energy prices. That only half worked.
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There are no real prices in the energy industry. On the one hand, government levies, levies and taxes determine the price per kilowatt hour. On the other hand, politicians have always subsidized wind, solar, coal and nuclear power.
Billions upon billions have flowed into the promotion of wind and solar power via the Renewable Energy Sources Act (EEG), coal power has never been assigned a realistic CO2 price, which is why one cannot speak of a real price here either, and with nuclear power, the state takes on the costly disposal of the radioactive waste. Even the ramp-up of a green hydrogen economy will not be possible without state aid. Several billion euros have already been reserved for this.
And that’s also true: without state intervention, the crisis year 2022 would have ended in disaster – with a bankrupt gas supplier Uniper. Now it depends on the right measure. That’s right.
At first glance, it is understandable that the industry is defending itself against state intervention. But you can’t always hold out your hand and call for state aid in a crisis and then suddenly want nothing more to do with market interventions when the situation calms down again. The energy industry is so systemically important that it will never work like the market for bread or bananas. The industry has to come to terms with this reality.
More: Electricity prices fall on the exchange by 67 percent – but it remains expensive for consumers