Why rising energy prices are becoming a growth risk

Berlin While supply bottlenecks should only temporarily dampen the upswing in the German economy, rising energy prices threaten to become a lasting threat. The leading economic institutes have lowered their growth forecast for the current year to 2.4 percent, shows the joint forecast presented on Thursday.

The institutes expect that most of the delivery problems will soon resolve, so that a large part of the growth can be made up for in 2022.

But energy prices threaten the postponed recovery. The cost of energy is at record highs. The price of Brent oil has most recently doubled within a year. The price for one megawatt hour of electricity peaked tenfold in the same period. The gas price rose by 130 percent, and that for coal by around 350 percent.