Senate wants to spare customers of municipal companies

The customers of Hamburger Energiewerke may be spared the gas levy decided by the federal government. This was announced by Hamburg's Environment and Energy Senator Jens Kerstan (Greens) on Tuesday after a Senate session. Kerstan, who is also the head of the supervisory board for the city's own energy company, said it was the Senate's firm plan not to add the levy to consumer prices. However, tests were now being carried out to determine whether this would work in terms of tax law, competition law and state aid law. If there are no legal concerns, "then we will do that too."

The federal government had set the gas surcharge on Monday at 2.419 cents per kilowatt hour. The surcharge is due from October 1st. For a family household with an annual consumption of 20,000 kilowatt hours, the additional costs are around 484 euros per year. If VAT is added, it is 576 euros.

Finance Senator Andreas Dressel (SPD) emphasized that not only the energy plants but Hamburg as a whole could afford not to pass the levy on to gas customers. Hamburg has bundled its municipal holdings in a kind of holding company. Losses are first compensated within the holding company, in case of doubt from the city budget. Precisely due to the strong increase in income from the stake in the shipping company Hapag Lloyd, things are better than planned, according to Dressel. “We have reserves to be able to absorb a tough autumn and winter.

At the same time, one does not want to leave the customers of private gas, electricity and heat providers "out in the rain", emphasized Kerstan. Dressel explained that a hardship fund is currently being prepared for those customers who are not with municipal providers, based on the model in Lower Saxony. "We don't want anyone losing their home or the power being cut off."

One point was particularly important to Senator Kerstan in the discussion. He appealed to Hamburg not to buy any fan heaters or radiators. Even if gas prices have recently gone through the roof, it costs four times as much to heat with electricity as with gas. In addition, the power grid cannot be prepared for when mobile power heaters are running in entire streets at the same time. "If it suddenly gets dark because the power is off, things don't heat up either," Kerstan said, almost warningly. He also reassured the people of Hamburg: "We will do everything so that it doesn't get cold. You don't need those things."

Hamburg does not mainly get its gas from Russia, but only about 40 percent. 60 percent of the gas is therefore secured, coming from Norway or the Netherlands, for example. With further savings measures and a conversion of the gas turbines in the Tiefstack and Haferweg combined heat and power plants, he is confident that he will save enough gas to supply private households.

162,000 Hamburg households and industrial customers are connected to the municipal gas network. Together they consumed 21 terawatt hours of gas. The five largest industrial companies alone accounted for a consumption of 25 percent, with industry as a whole accounting for around a third of consumption.