The abolition of the surcharge for green electricity, the EEG surcharge, could already be financed without any difficulties.
According to the four major transmission system operators, revenue from the promotion of renewable energies exceeded expenditure by more than 15 billion euros last year.
At the end of 2020 there was still a minus of 4.4 billion, so the status on the so-called EEG account is now plus 10.6 billion.
This roughly corresponds to the federal grants of the past year of 10.8 billion euros.
Christian Geinitz
Business correspondent in Berlin
Follow I follow
Actually, the federal government did not want to completely abolish the EEG surcharge, which had already been reduced at the beginning of the year, until 2023.
However, it is becoming apparent that this could happen as early as 2022 in order to depress the high electricity prices.
Every private household and many commercial customers have to make this special payment, which accounts for more than a tenth of the end consumer price.
In 2021 the surcharge was 6.5 cents per kilowatt hour, now it is 3.7 cents.
The premium was last lower ten years ago.
As the network operators 50 Hertz, Amprion, Tennet and Transnet-BW report, the EEG surcharge brought in 22.6 billion euros last year, 600 million less than in 2020. It is there to compensate for the difference between market prices and the fixed feed-in tariff Compensate for green electricity providers.
However, their income from electricity trading tripled within a year from 1.1 to 3.1 billion euros, so tapping into the levy was less necessary.
In the first Corona year 2020, on the other hand, the demand for electricity and prices had fallen sharply, and there had been no federal subsidy.
At that time, the total income on the EEG account was almost 25 billion euros and the expenditure was 31 billion euros.
In contrast, the values for 2021 were around 37 and 22 billion euros.