“East criticises grid fee plans”

Influential partisans of Social Democrat Sigmar Gabriel continue to rebuke the economy minister for budging from plans to align grid fees across Germany, Ulrich Milde writes in Leipziger Volkszeitung. “I’m very angry that the promised fairer allocation of grid fees apparently has been cancelled,” Saxony’s social democratic economy minister Martin Dulig said, joining his colleagues from eastern German states Thuringia and Saxony-Anhalt. According to industry representatives, grid fees in eastern Germany are up to 50 percent higher than the national average, thereby aggravating its relative economic underdevelopment, Milde writes.
Grid fees account for about a quarter of the power price and are higher in regions that are sparsely populated and where grids have to be expanded due to newly installed renewable energy capacities.

For further information, see the CLEW dossier The energy transition and Germany’s power grid and the CLEW factsheet German federalism: In 16 states of mind over the Energiewende.