Expansion of renewables: North German federal states want their own electricity prices

The northern German non-city states are in favor of dividing Germany into different price zones for electricity.

According to a report by "Welt am Sonntag", the countries want to ensure more justice in electricity prices.

"If I live or produce where the energy is produced or landed, this energy must also be cheaper there," Lower Saxony's Energy Minister Olaf Lies (SPD) is quoted as saying.

The north has been bearing the brunt of the energy transition for years.

According to the report, Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania's Energy Minister Reinhard Meyer (SPD) criticized: "The level of electricity grid fees burdens end consumers and disadvantages the north German business location." have to cope with electricity prices.

According to the report, Schleswig-Holstein's Energy Transition Minister Tobias Goldschmidt (Greens) calls a division into price zones "the logical consequence of the energy policy aberration" of Bavarian state governments.

For more than 15 years, they have sabotaged the expansion of power grids and wind power.

It was "simply no longer possible to explain to the people in the north why they have to foot the bill for it".

Bavaria refers to state financial equalization

The Bavarian state government reacted with outrage and made an offsetting calculation with the state financial equalization system.

Prime Minister Markus Söder (CSU) argued on Bayerischer Rundfunk (BR) that the Free State mainly supplies itself with its own green electricity.

"But the most absurd thing is: Bavaria pays nine billion in financial equalization between the states." Minister of Economics Hubert Aiwanger (free voters) said on Saturday: "We now need a price cap for electricity and gas and the assumption of the additional costs from the federal budget." Not effective is, on the other hand, "a small-scale debate about grid fees and electricity price zones."

Bavarian Finance Minister Albert Füracker (CSU) spoke of "very irritating proposals from red-green ministers from the north" that lacked any technical basis.

"It is simply wrong that Bavaria would have neglected the expansion of renewable energies," said Füracker.

Bavaria takes the top spot in terms of the proportion of regeneratively generated energy, for example from the sun, water and biomass.

Overall, Bavaria is in second place in the ranking of the federal states for the production of renewable electricity.

In the past, demands for a new regulation of the so-called distribution grid fees have repeatedly come from the north.

Critics have repeatedly pointed out that regions with a lot of renewable energy, for example from wind power, are burdened with higher fees.

"If, after the EU, the northern German federal states are now also discussing whether Germany needs two electricity price zones, that shows how badly the CSU has failed in terms of energy policy," said the parliamentary group leader of the Greens in the Bundestag, Katharina Dröge, at the weekend.

The Bavarian Prime Minister Markus Söder must "finally present an immediate plan for the expansion of wind energy." The 10H distance rule for wind in Bavaria must fall.

The rule stipulates that wind turbines should be at least ten times their height from residential buildings.