No dominant actor on German electricity market but RWE merits close look – antitrust authorities

No single energy company can currently claim any dominance over Germany's electricity market, the Federal Network Agency (BNetzA) and the federal antitrust authorities (Bundeskartellamt) said in their 2019 monitoring report. "The five biggest power producers' market share has been in decline for years," said Bundeskartellamt president Andreas Mundt, adding that the changes caused by Germany's energy transition still warranted close market monitoring. "Market dominance can become an important issues at times when there's no wind or sunshine," he said. The report found that RWE remains the country's energy market leader and that it has set itself "far apart" from its competitors following the merger/swap-deal with competitor E.ON. The report said RWE had been "indispensable" for Germany's power supply during a "not-insubstantial number of hours" but concluded that this does "not yet" mean the company has a dominant position in the market. In 2018, the total capacity of conventional energy generation had shrunk "minimally" by 0.7 gigawatts (GW), while the renewable energy capacity grew by 6.6 GW, the report found, noting that wind power expansion had suffered a "remarkable" decline.

The European Union in September greenlighted the deal that turns the coal company RWE into one of Europe's largest renewable energy companies. E.ON, on the other hand, will focus on grids, energy retailing and customer solutions and competitors have warned the company's expected market share of 20 percent could allow it to achieve a dominant position in this segment.