Gas and electricity price brake: change required for energy price brakes

The Federal Council has only just approved the energy price brakes - calls for improvements are already being made from the opposition and from business.

Gas and electricity price brake: change required for energy price brakes

The Federal Council has only just approved the energy price brakes - calls for improvements are already being made from the opposition and from business. The left criticizes the gas price brake as socially unfair and calls for lower gas and electricity prices for consumers.

"In order to effectively curb price increases and inflation and to relieve households, the left is demanding a price cap of 8 cents per kilowatt hour for gas and 30 cents for household electricity," said party leader Janine Wissler, according to a statement. The party executive decided at the weekend to make corresponding demands on the federal government. "Government price controls could curb price increases without having to spend billions on subsidies," says Wissler.

The Federal Council approved the energy price brakes on Friday. The brakes are to apply to private households and small and medium-sized companies from March, with retrospective relief planned for January and February.

The electricity price brake works in a similar way to the gas price brake

With the gas price brake, a gross gas price of 12 cents per kilowatt hour is to be guaranteed for 80 percent of the respective previous consumption. For heat customers, the price should be 9.5 cents up to the 80 percent limit. For the remaining 20 percent, the normal contract price should apply - so an incentive to save should be retained. The electricity price brake works in a similar way. It stipulates that 80 percent of the current consumption will be obtained at a guaranteed gross price of 40 cents per kilowatt hour.

"The gas price brake of the traffic light relieves those who have consumed the most and saved the least in the past," said Wissler. "Anyone who was frugal last year can now save less and pay more. That's why the gas price cap is ecologically unfair. The left-wing alternative is a gas price cap that applies up to a fixed upper limit."

The coalition factions are also aware of the problem. In an application, they recently called for examinations to be carried out over the next few months to better relieve small and particularly frugal households and to make adjustments if necessary. One option could be a cap for private households.

"Most companies will be relieved"

The hospitality and trade fair industry also sees a fairness problem with the aid for companies. "The vast majority of companies will be relieved by the energy price brakes. However, as they have now been decided, they disadvantage companies that have already suffered the most from the Corona measures," said Ingrid Hartges, general manager of the Dehoga hotel and restaurant association "Picture on Sunday" ("BamS").

A medium-sized hotel with a gas consumption of more than 1.5 million kilowatt hours that was closed for five months in 2021 due to the lockdown and consumed correspondingly less will receive less support in 2023, said Hartges. "Companies are being punished twice here. The government has known about the problem for weeks and now it has to be solved."

The amount of the gas price brake should be calculated for households and small and medium-sized companies from the annual consumption that the supplier has forecast for September 2022. However, companies with a gas consumption of more than 1.5 million kilowatt hours per year receive 70 percent of their gas consumption based on their consumption in 2021 at a guaranteed price of 7 cents per kilowatt hour.

"The Corona year 2021 is the absolutely wrong reference year," said Jörn Holtmeier, Managing Director of the trade fair association, the "BamS". It is "incredible that the trade fair bans issued by politicians have already been forgotten". He calls for a pre-Corona year as the basis for calculating the price brakes.

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