Germany's energy crisis: Gas price brakes should come into effect as early as February

The Chancellery, Economics and Finance Ministries have agreed on the cornerstones for the next relief steps, especially for gas customers.

In essence, the government is adopting the proposals presented by the Gas Commission with its 21 members in its final report on Monday.

Compared to the government's previous legislative plans, this also means that some important details are still changing.

This emerges from an overview paper by the government that is available to the FAZ.

Julia Loehr

Business correspondent in Berlin.

• Follow I follow

The point that comes first: for December 2022, households and small businesses that receive their heat from gas or district heating will be exempted from the monthly down payment.

Prerequisite: You are billed with a so-called standard load profile and have an annual consumption of less than 1500 megawatt hours of gas.

"Specifically, end consumers of natural gas will no longer be obliged to make the contractually agreed advance or down payment in December 2022," the paper says.

"Amounts that end consumers still pay must be taken into account in the next bill from the natural gas supplier." With this billing passage, the federal government apparently wants to prevent gas suppliers from debiting the monthly advance payment because they have not yet collected the money from the gas supplier themselves have received covenant.

Important for tenants: You will only get the relief next year when the utility bills for 2022 are drawn up.

"Thus, tenants benefit from the relief at the time when they would have to bear the entire price increase of 2022 through any additional payments," it says.

The working group's letter leaves open whether tenants whose landlords have already increased the monthly advance payments for operating costs due to the rise in gas prices will receive a credit note in December.

12 billion euros in the hardship fund

The second level of relief, the gas price brake, should then take effect from March 2023, but this - and this is new - retrospectively.

"In addition, retrospective relief as of February 1 is being sought," says government circles.

Recently, there had been a lot of criticism that no aid should be paid out in January and February.

The attempt by experts and the government to sell the decreed December discount as an aid for January and February has obviously failed.

Basically, the following applies: For 80 percent of the previous year's consumption, the state subsidizes the kilowatt-hour price down to 12 cents with the gas price brake - but not directly, but afterwards.

In other words, consumers continue to pay what is in most cases the higher price to their supplier and are paid the difference to the capped price as a premium from the state.

The hope behind it: The incentive to save gas could be higher than if the prices were capped from the start.

Households with a higher income should have to pay tax on the relief from 2023 as a benefit in kind.

The Commission had proposed an annual income of 72,000 euros as the limit.

The previously announced hardship fund is first given a number in the paper: 12 billion euros should be available for this.

It is intended for hardship cases of tenants, landlords, housing companies, hospitals, social services and others.

The criteria for hardship and who will pay out the money are still open.

This should also be the topic of the federal-state discussion on Wednesday.

At the time of Corona, the federal states had paid out most of the aid for the federal government.

A hardship regulation should also apply to owner-occupied residential property where the supply of other heating media such as oil or wood pellets “leads to unreasonable burdens”.

The paper estimates a high single-digit billion amount for emergency aid in December.

The funds required for the gas and heat price brake is estimated at more than 30 billion euros, the reduced basic quota for industry should cost 21 billion euros.

According to the paper, the electricity price brake for households and small companies costs between 23 and 33 billion euros, and the industrial electricity price brake costs another 30 to 36 billion euros.

Almost 13 billion euros are earmarked for the stabilization of the transmission network fees for 2023.