Friday 5th November 2021
Industry saved ten billion
Politics is silent EEG trickery dead
With tricks and an amnesty, German companies save EEG surcharges of ten billion euros. But instead of getting the electricity customers back their excessive expenses, the Union, SPD and FDP are silent about it. Only the Greens can check whether the machinations will still be an issue.
Neither the Union nor the traffic light parties have shown any great interest in dealing with the ten billion euro scandal surrounding the alleged abuse of the Renewable Energy Sources Act (EEG). According to a “Spiegel” report, there are only initial considerations among the Greens to get the money back for consumers who have been cheated by industrial groups. The CDU / CSU and SPD, who are responsible for the loophole in the law and who enforced a far-reaching amnesty for large corporations such as Bayer, Evonik, Currenta, Daimler or Thyssenkrupp, persistently remain silent at the request of the magazine.
This week the SPD elected a lawyer from BBH, a law firm involved in the affair, as president of its economic forum. The FDP did not comment either, but indicated in talks in Berlin that, in their opinion, the industry was already burdened with excessive taxes.
Legal examination of the amnesty paragraph
According to “Spiegel”, only the Greens are having a legal check whether the EEG surcharge saved by the industry can still be recovered and credited to electricity customers who had to bear higher EEG loads as a result of the trickery. The paper refers to the environment of the energy policy spokesman Oliver Krischer. After that, the Greens are looking for a way to overturn the amnesty paragraph anchored in the EEG by the old government. But the tendency to burden the coalition negotiations with the sensitive issue is not pronounced, despite the high sum of ten billion euros, even among the Greens, the paper wrote.
The “Spiegel” reported last week that, with the knowledge of the federal government, companies had avoided paying the EEG surcharge for many years with questionable models. Specifically, it was about the so-called disk lease model. Companies lease parts of power plants (panes) and thus become co-owners of these power plants with the help of ingenious contracts on paper. The generation and use of electricity for your own production is exempt from the EEG tax. When the matter was exposed and billions in arrears were threatened, some corporations successfully pushed for an amnesty. Consumer advocates are calling for relief for the overreached electricity customers. The corporations insist on the legitimacy of their models.