The state development bank KfW has already paid out a large part of the money requested so far to energy companies as part of the emergency aid for gas and district heating customers.

At the start of the reimbursement payments to the suppliers on December 1, KfW had 449 applications, as the state development bank announced on Friday on request. Of these, 309 applications with a volume of around 1.7 billion euros had been fully processed and paid out by Thursday evening. The state development bank does not pay any money to consumers, but to energy suppliers who do not charge their customers for December.

According to the information, the processing time for the applications from the suppliers is around two bank working days. "A processing backlog is currently not foreseeable," even if further applications were received every day, the development bank said.

Gas and district heating customers do not have to pay a deduction in December. The federal government bears the costs. Since mid-November, energy suppliers have been able to submit an application for a compensation payment to the auditing company PwC commissioned by the federal government. This checks the application and the reimbursement amount and hands over the further processing to the house bank of the supplier. After checking, the bank forwards the documents to KfW, which pays the money to the energy supplier.

Around 1500 natural gas suppliers and heat suppliers can assert a claim. Applications can be submitted until the end of February 2023. According to KfW, the volumes of the applications received so far range from a few thousand to several hundred million euros.