Energy Turnaround and Rising Electricity Prices: Who Will Bear the Main Burden of High Costs?

The nuclear phase-out and the targeted energy turnaround will probably lead to rising electricity prices. According to some estimates, electricity prices could increase by up to 30% by 2020. Who will bear the main burden of these high costs? Is it possible to reduce the cost of the energy turnaround? Manuel Frondel, Christoph M. Schmidt and Nils aus dem Moore, Rheinisch-Westfälisches Institut für Wirtschaftsforschung (RWI), Essen, prefer a support scheme that promotes market-based further expansion of renewable energy. Switching to a support scheme that promotes the future development of renewable energy with the help of market-based quantity control, instead of the energy turnaround policy, could prove more cost-effective. Thomas Bruckner and Hendrik Kondziella, University of Leipzig, see the rebuilding of energy infrastructure as a process that will take the next 40 years. The resulting costs should be fairly and transparently shared among all concerned, and the advantages of renewable energy use should be made clear to all consumer groups. The important question is how the energy turnaround can be organized so that none of the generations involved must bear a disproportionate burden in terms of the mid-term costs of restructuring the energy system and so that Germany's economic power will not be threatened. According to Holger Krawinkel, the Federation of German Consumer Associations, the German Renewable Energy Sources Act requires urgent reform. Above all, the growing problem of the temporary over-production of green electricity must be addressed. The exemption from grid fees for certain industries cannot be objectively justified. Kathrin Goldammer, Institute for Advanced Sustainability Studies e.V., Potsdam, does not merely see the energy turnaround as a cost factor. In her view, the EEG reallocation charge is also an innovation driver, as the money spent on it is to be invested in new technologies. She believes that the social utility of a sustainable, ecological economy should also be emphasized. The costs of "business as usual" would probably be higher.