To ensure that Russian bottlenecks do not bring the German gas market to its knees, customers will have to pay a levy on each kilowatt hour from October. But there could be additional fees: A storage levy for suppliers is also in the law.
In addition to the gas levy to save important importers, gas customers could face other levies. From October 1, gas suppliers will have to pay 0.57 cents for so-called control energy for every kilowatt hour of natural gas consumed by households, as the company Trading Hub Europe (THE) in Ratingen announced. For companies, the surcharge is 0.39 cents per kilowatt hour. Whether and to what extent these surcharges will be passed on from the gas suppliers to the end consumers is an open question. They would then be added to the already published gas surcharge of 2.419 cents per kilowatt hour.
THE is a joint venture of the long-distance gas network operators. It always uses control energy, i.e. gas, when the ratio between gas volumes fed in and out is not balanced in the nationwide gas network. The costs are allocated. This storage allocation, which has existed for several years, is currently zero euros.
The amount of this gas storage levy was also published on Thursday. It is 0.059 cents per kilowatt hour. With an annual consumption of 20,000 kilowatt hours, this would mean additional costs of 11.80 euros per household without VAT per year just for the gas storage levy. Here too, however, it is still unclear whether and how it will be passed on to consumers.
The gas storage surcharge is intended to compensate THE for the costs incurred to ensure security of supply, i.e. for gas purchases. However, compared to the additional costs for gas importers due to the lack of deliveries from Russia, the storage levy is hardly significant.
The legal basis for the gas storage surcharge is the amended Energy Industry Act. According to THE, the new surcharge is limited in time until March 31, 2025 in accordance with the legal basis.
The federal government had previously announced that it would demand a lower VAT rate on natural gas. Chancellor Olaf Scholz announced at noon that the tax should be reduced from the previous 19 to 7 percent. With the step, the gas customers would be relieved overall much more than they would be burdened by the state gas surcharge.
