Germany’s municipal utilities are expecting significantly higher electricity prices in the coming year. That could put the municipal companies in dire straits. Prime Ministers Söder and Weil are already thinking about a rescue package.
The Prime Ministers of Bavaria and Lower Saxony, Markus Söder and Stephan Weil, have called for a rescue package for the municipal utilities threatened by the energy crisis. The federal government’s protective shield for large companies must be extended to public utilities, said SPD politician Weil of the “Bild am Sonntag”. The CSU boss Söder said to the same newspaper: “We need a rescue package like Corona, of course also for the public utilities. Otherwise the lights will go out soon.”
Weil emphasized that the public utilities are in a difficult position. They would have to pay more and more for the procurement of energy, but could only pass on these prices with a delay and would have to fear payment defaults by their customers.
“We need a protective shield to avert payment difficulties,” says a statement from the Association of Municipal Enterprises (VKU) for the Bayern media group. The general manager of the Association of Towns and Municipalities, Gerd Landsberg, also warned in the “BamS”: “In many municipal utilities it is 5 to 12. If they are no longer able to act, the supply of the citizens is at risk.”
CDU Vice Andreas Jung told the Bayern media group that the municipal utilities are just as important to the system as the gas importer Uniper. The federal government should not unilaterally shift responsibility to the federal states and local authorities. “We now need a protective shield for the municipal utilities from liquidity support, a KfW guarantee program and reliable insolvency protection very quickly,” demanded Jung.
Stadtwerke expect many payment defaults from their customers due to the high energy prices. Numerous municipal utilities calculated losses of up to 8 and some up to 15 percent, which would then become “threatening”, said the managing director of the Association of Municipal Enterprises (VKU), Ingbert Liebing, in an interview with the Funke newspapers at the end of August.
