With 700,000 customers and an annual turnover of around 1.8 billion euros, the Darmstadt-based energy supplier Entega is one of the larger municipal utilities in Germany.

The company, which is almost entirely owned by the city of Darmstadt, has been managed by Marie-Luise Wolff since 2013, who previously worked for E.on and Mainova.

She is also chairwoman of the Federal Association of Energy and Water Management.

Inga Janovic

Editor in the regional section of the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung and responsible editor of the business magazine Metropol.

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Ms. Wolff, Entega has announced that it will lower its prices for electricity and gas again in the spring.

How come?

Yes, we will be able to reduce the prices for basic services by almost 25 percent for electricity and 30 percent for gas from April 1st.

This is a result of the falling prices on the energy markets, but of course it also has to do with our forward-looking purchasing policy.

We have a number of experts in the company who monitor the markets closely and buy the required quantities as cheaply as possible in the interests of our customers.

Incidentally, I assume that in the course of the second half of 2023 we will also be able to reduce the prices in the competitive tariffs, i.e. for all our customers.

Do you and your customers then not need any subsidies under the rules of the price brakes for gas and electricity?

It makes more than sense that the federal government has legally anchored the price brakes and thus maximum values ​​for electricity and gas.

Because the last two years have shown us how volatile energy prices are today and how dependent on international and global political events, over which we as a German utility company naturally have no influence.

Would all suppliers now have to reverse their increases, at least in part?

The pricing in the market is largely related to the procurement strategy of the respective company.

It is therefore not possible to make this general statement.

It is true that suppliers who procure at very short notice are the first to be able to pass on the lower prices.

At this point, however, I would like to point out that it was also these companies that sent notices to their customers at the beginning of 2022, when prices rose sharply, and it was the municipal utilities that then took them on and continued to supply them as part of their basic service obligation.

I can't speak for other companies here, but one thing is clear: the model of some low-cost suppliers selling off energy as discount goods is not serious in my view,

How confident are you that we're past the top prizes?

There is no security there.

The prices are always only a current status, you cannot conclude anything from them.

Prices bounced back immediately last week when the weather forecast predicted low temperatures.

And we still have the coldest weeks of winter ahead of us.

Irrespective of this, one thing is clear: we will probably never reach the level of two years ago, especially with gas prices.

So we're not quite at the end of the energy price crisis, are we?

The volatility remains.

The situation in Asia will play a decisive role in further development: if China goes into recession, we will have a lot of gas, including LNG gas.

If the Chinese economy recovers, prices will go up.

Gas is not infinitely available, you can tell every twitch in the prices.

I assume that the 60 to 80 euros that we last saw is the new normal.

But that's still a whopping 100 to 120 euros per megawatt hour or ten to twelve cents per kilowatt hour for the customer.

For a long time, even higher prices were to be feared.

In autumn you were a member of the commission that drew up proposals for state aid.

Was the decision to intervene in the market with state subsidies too hasty?