“Industry grid fee rebates: Siemens rejects Green party’s criticism”

German engineering giant Siemens has rejected criticism from the Green party that it lets private households pay for its electricity bill as “misleading” and “outrightly wrong”, Handelsblatt Online reports. Green MP Bärbel Höhn previously said it was “hardly justifiable” that private households had to stand in for big businesses like Siemens or Aldi, which were eligible for grid fee rebates. Siemens insisted it paid 60 million euros in EEG-surcharges in 2016 alone and did not operate any sites that are exempt from the surcharge, according to Handelsblatt Online. Grid operators last week stated that the costs of exemptions other power consumers had to shoulder would climb to 1.115 billion euros next year.

Read the article in German here.

For background read the CLEW article Industry grid fee rebates top 1 billion euros, fuel reform debate.