Shock after the winter vacation: prices at the petrol stations reach new records

In many federal states, those who came back from their winter vacation on the weekend at the end of the holiday came across sporty prices at the petrol stations: Super E10 cost more than 2 euros per liter at many motorway petrol stations.

According to the ADAC car club, the average for all petrol stations in Germany was 1.659 euros per liter.

At 1.584 euros per liter, the price of diesel even reached the highest level in history - a new all-time high.

Christian Siedenbiedel

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Various reasons came together for the recent price increase: "The main drivers are the crude oil prices", said Steffen Bock, the managing director of the Internet platform Clever-Tanken.

Crude oil, for example, which fell significantly in price in November and December due to concerns about possible further lockdowns, has now become more expensive again: Most recently, a barrel (159 liters) of the North Sea Brent cost around $ 82, at the beginning of December it was less than 70 Dollars.

Increase in the price of CO2 at the turn of the year

In addition, at the turn of the year the price of CO2 on fuels was raised, from 25 to 30 euros per tonne of carbon dioxide. Mathematically, this resulted in an increase in the price of petrol by 1.4 cents per liter and for diesel by 1.5 cents per liter. The ADAC said that was not that much, but the already higher prices were on top of that. On the days around the turn of the year a price increase was observed for both super and diesel, but not comparable to the development a year ago when the CO2 price for fuels was introduced.

Electricity has also become even more expensive for consumers - even though the EEG green electricity surcharge has been reduced. The (old) federal government actually wanted to relieve consumers with this step to compensate for the increase in the price of heating oil and gasoline due to the new CO2 price. Last year, among other things, higher costs for network charges thwarted such a relief step.

Now the Internet portal Verivox reports that the electricity price for consumers rose again in January. “At more than 35 cents per kilowatt hour, the price of electricity for households is higher than ever before,” reports Verivox after evaluating its own price data. In the local basic supply tariff, a kilowatt hour of electricity for a three-person household with an annual consumption of 4,000 kilowatt hours recently cost an average of 35.15 cents. This corresponds to an increase of 3.5 percent compared to December 2021. “At the beginning of the year, more than 300 of the around 800 local electricity suppliers in Germany increased their prices by an average of 15 percent, a three-person household pays around 200 euros more per year “, Says Thorsten Storck, energy specialist at Verivox.

At the turn of the year, the EEG surcharge, through which the expansion of renewable energies is financed, was reduced from 6.5 to 3.72 cents per kilowatt hour.

As a result, the electricity price should actually have fallen by around 3 cents per kilowatt hour.

"The electricity suppliers do not pass the lower EEG surcharge on to their customers because the purchase prices on the electricity exchange have multiplied," said Storck: "In addition, the nationwide average fees for the electricity networks have increased slightly by 4 percent."

Debate about monetary policy consequences

The high energy prices and their influence on inflation are evidently causing a growing debate in the European Central Bank (ECB) as to how monetary policy should deal with it. In the euro area, inflation rose to 5 percent in December. The prices for energy rose by 26 percent. ECB board member Isabel Schnabel pointed out in a speech on Saturday that the politically desired increase in energy prices in the course of climate protection could have a driving effect on inflation for a transition phase - and had at least questioned the previous practice of the central banks, through energy price fluctuations just "look through".

In doing so, she triggered a debate on the short message service Twitter as to what follows from this and whether the ECB should interfere in such matters. “While energy prices have often fallen as quickly as they have risen in the past, the need to step up the fight against climate change could mean that fossil fuel prices will not only stay high but will have to rise if we do Want to achieve goals of the Paris Climate Agreement, "said Schnabel:" The combination of insufficient production capacity for renewable energies in the short term, reluctant investments in fossil fuels and rising carbon prices means that we may face a lengthy transition period in which the energy bills will rise. "

In such a process, governments would have to protect the weakest parts of society from higher energy prices in such a way that the green transition would not be delayed, said Schnabel.

For its part, monetary policy cannot afford to ignore energy price increases if they pose a risk to medium-term price stability.

Economists reacted differently.

"Schnabel says that higher energy prices could force the ECB to act," tweeted Jörg Krämer, Commerzbank's chief economist.

"But I doubt that the ECB will raise its key interest rate this year." The economist Gustav Horn, member of the SPD federal executive board, wrote: "I totally agree with Isabel Schnabel - in the current environment there is no longer any reason for negative interest rates."