The Federal Association of Energy and Water Industries believes that introducing the electricity price brake on January 1st is not feasible. That's what general manager Kerstin Andreae said in Berlin. The implementation and design should be carried out by the customer in the same way as for the gas price brake. This will only take effect on March 1, 2023. For this reason, a "waiver" of the December deduction is planned as emergency aid.

Federal Minister of Economics Robert Habeck had told the "Handelsblatt": "The relief in electricity prices must in any case start in January at the latest. That's what we're aiming for." However, Habeck drew attention to difficulties in financing the electricity price brake. The government wants to get the money for this by skimming off "chance profits" from electricity producers.

Some steps still unclear

Andreae said that it has not yet been determined by which body and by which procedure random profits should be skimmed off, which, in contrast to the gas price brake, should be used for the relief. "The model most recently proposed by the federal government is extremely complex to implement and cannot be technically or organizationally implemented by the companies concerned." In addition, retrospective skimming off of random profits should not be implemented.

"The confidence of the market participants in government commitments and the stability of the market framework are central to further investments in the expansion," said Andreae. The federal government should therefore urgently develop a more practicable and future-oriented model for skimming. The implementation of the associated EU requirements should be as simple as possible and must be handled by a state organization.