CDU parliamentary group leader Andreas Jung criticizes the planned electricity price brake. It puts bioenergy at a disadvantage compared to hard coal, which means that a lot of potential would be lost.
The Union warns of a decline in domestic bioenergy production in the middle of the energy crisis due to the electricity price brake planned by the federal government. “There must be no new bioenergy cover through the back door,” said the deputy leader of the Union parliamentary group, Andreas Jung, in the “Augsburger Allgemeine”. The CDU politician criticized the plans of the Green Federal Minister of Economics, Robert Habeck, to retrospectively skim off profits from biogas operators, unlike in the case of hard coal-fired power generation, which puts producers at a disadvantage compared to coal-fired power plant operators.
“Bioenergy is being slowed down with his proposals for a brake on electricity prices,” said Jung. “Bioenergy shouldn’t always have new obstacles placed in its way, it finally needs to be reliable. Millions of households can be supplied with electricity, heat and biomethane. This potential must not be wasted.”
The agricultural policy spokesman for the CDU/CSU parliamentary group, Albert Stegemann, called the plans unacceptable in terms of energy and climate policy. “Instead of raising all available biogas capacities in the short term in order to get through the winter with some certainty, the planned skimming of the proceeds is likely to reduce the energy supply,” the CDU politician told the newspaper.
“With his proposal, Minister Habeck is endangering the domestic security of supply in the biggest energy crisis in recent decades.” Because production costs have also recently increased in the field of bioenergy. “For many electricity producers, the ‘safety buffer’ of three cents per kilowatt hour should therefore not be sufficient to generate electricity economically.”
The Union faction refers to the calculations of the “Capital Bioenergy Office” – it is supported by the Federal Bioenergy Association, the German Farmers’ Association, the Biogas Association and the Wood Energy Association. In simplified terms, the government wants to introduce a cap on excess profits. It is the average EEG remuneration of currently 20 cents that the operator would receive for his biomass electricity (the so-called value to be applied), plus a surcharge of 3 cents per kilowatt hour. 90 percent of all proceeds above this amount go to the state
A model calculation available to the newspaper illustrates the problem: If the operator were to get 33 cents per kilowatt hour for his bioenergy on the market, only 24 cents would remain in the end. Because of the ten cents in revenue above the cap of a total of 23 cents, only one cent would go to the operator. Electricity price proceeds from hard coal or nuclear power, on the other hand, can be collected in full.
