The north produces a lot of wind energy – also for the rest of the republic. Now these federal states are demanding that the regions that produce green energy should be rewarded for it. Lower Saxony, Schleswig-Holstein and Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania have their own electricity prices in mind.
The northern German non-city states are in favor of dividing Germany into different price zones for electricity. According to a report by “Welt am Sonntag”, the countries want to ensure more justice in electricity prices. “If I live or produce where the energy is produced or landed, this energy must also be cheaper there,” Lower Saxony’s Energy Minister Olaf Lies was quoted as saying by the SPD. The North has been bearing the brunt of the energy transition for years.
According to the report, Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania’s Energy Minister, the SPD politician Reinhard Meyer, criticized: “The level of electricity network charges burdens end consumers and disadvantages the north German business location.” It cannot be the case that countries that shoulder a large share of the expansion of renewable energies have to cope with the highest electricity prices.
According to the report, Schleswig-Holstein’s Energy Transition Minister Tobias Goldschmidt calls a division into price zones “the logical consequence of the energy policy mistake” of Bavarian state governments. For more than 15 years, these had sabotaged the expansion of power grids and wind power, according to the Green. It was “simply no longer possible to explain to the people in the north why they have to foot the bill for it”.
In the past, demands for a new regulation of the so-called distribution grid fees have repeatedly come from the north. Critics have repeatedly pointed out that regions with a lot of renewable energy, such as wind power, are burdened with higher fees.
