Who gets the emergency aid?

According to the cabinet decision on Wednesday, private households and small and medium-sized companies that heat with gas or district heating should not have to make an advance payment for the month of December.

The federal government wants to reimburse the utilities through the state development bank KfW by the beginning of December, so that they do not collect the deductions from the customers.

It will become clear at the beginning of December whether this will work out in practice in view of the lack of time, or whether the deduction will be debited and then credited again.

All those consumers who have concluded the contract with the supplier themselves, for example homeowners or tenants of apartments with their own gas boiler, will feel the emergency aid immediately.

how much money is there

Julia Loehr

Business correspondent in Berlin.

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9 billion euros are planned for emergency aid.

The money comes from the Economic Stabilization Fund, which the Bundestag and Bundesrat recently filled with 200 billion euros.

The amount of the individual relief for gas customers is calculated as follows: One twelfth of the annual consumption as estimated by the supplier in September, multiplied by the kilowatt-hour price applicable in December.

A twelfth is also to be reimbursed for other price elements.

Attention: The amount of the emergency aid and the December deduction that has not been debited can differ from each other.

The suppliers should compensate for any differences with the next bill.

The above formula for emergency aid is decisive for the amount of the relief, not the December deduction.

For district heating customers, the relief results from the advance payment in September plus 20 percent.

The surcharge is intended to cover price increases that have taken place since then.

What do tenants have to consider?

Tenants usually transfer an advance payment for the operating costs to their landlord every month in addition to the cold rent.

If this advance payment has not yet been adjusted to the increased gas prices this year, nothing will change in December.

The emergency aid will be credited to the operating costs account and taken into account in the utility bill for 2022.

If the landlord has already raised the advance payments, the tenants should not have to pay the increase in December.

If it is a new lease, the tenants should be exempted from the gas or district heating deduction in December.

How this is supposed to work in practice is still open.

When will the price brake come?

The price brake for gas and district heating is to be implemented from March, but will apply retrospectively from February.

From then until April 30, 2024, gas customers should receive 80 percent of their forecast annual consumption - based on the forecast as of September 2022 - for 12 cents per kilowatt hour.

For district heating customers, the price cap is 9.5 cents.

However, the price should not be so cheap from the outset, but the customers should continue to pay the high prices to their suppliers and then receive a premium.

This should be an incentive to save energy.