Germany is a leader in renewables, so why does it have one of the highest EU electricity prices?
https://www.euronews.com/2026/06/01/germany-is-a-leader-in-renewables-so-why-does-it-have-one-of-the-highest-eu-electricity-pr
Posted by lgbtqismything
24 Comments
Meritorder, reliance on russian gas and oil and costly tranformation of the entire grid
Many taxes, an oligarch style of big electricity companies, no real capability to store overproduced renewable energy.
Milk isn’t cheap in Swiss with its Alpine meadows.
Electricity is cheap like minus 6 to plus 8 Cent but the grid prices are extremly high Like 12-16 Cent then another 2 Cent for the city und 2 Cent electricity tax. After that there are 19% tax on top.
So after all electricity costs 30-35 Cent.
The idea was that a country running fully on renewables would have very low energy prices. However, the transition and the constant battling about it on the political side have led to it becoming more and more expensive, killing the whole process to a good degree.
In the early 2000s it was envisioned to be running completely on renewables by 2020 I think. That was when the Green Party was still in charge – but 16 years of Merkel have not helped since despite some green efforts along the way.
The german grid is also one of the more CO2 intensive ones in the EU. Only Czechia, Bulgaria and Poland produced more CO2/KWh of generated power: [https://app.electricitymaps.com/map/all/yearly](https://app.electricitymaps.com/map/all/yearly)
the price of electricity is determined by the highest price of production, which most often is lignite or gas. Even if 100% of the electricity in Emden fx might be from wind its price cant be lower than the lignite coal power plant in NRW. Thats what happens when the rules are wirtten by people bought by the coal and gas lobby 😄
This article claims that the average price of electricity is 0,39 CT/kWh. Which it is not. At least if you care about your electricity prices and change to any cheaper provider.
The headline should be “why do so many germans pay too much for their electricity?”Â
If something is overpriced, it’s usually down to corruption.
No matter which country.
In Germany, it is the right-wing conservative parties that are playing into the hands of the energy companies by making solar panels unattractive for private households.
The latest idea: regardless of whether you feed electricity into the grid from your own solar panels or not, you are required to pay an extra levy to the grid.
The grid, which is controlled by the energy companies and generates a return on equity of 20–50% for its owners.
It’s simply corruption
Because of NIMBYs blocking transfer connections, and renewable build out in the south. The government is also opposing to split the single electricity market, which would make the prices in the north to fall.
Because of the corporate corruption on high positions. Sorry.
Merit order is the reason. The price is set by the most expensive Power plant, that’s currently active(Gas, Coal). The price is the same over the whole country. Regions that haven’t invested in to Renewable’s and still pretty much only use Fossil fuels make it expensive. That’s why many want regional Energy prices. Our Energy price is stagnating in 2026 because of the system. If we build lots of energy storage systems our energy price could go down by alot. 100GWh is the goal for 2030 and ~75GWh have a building permit right now. There are also Grid charges that everyone has to pay. There’re right now pretty expensive because of the Infrastructure Expansion.
The base electricity price in germany gets determined by the highest price among the local lowest prices. So even though electricity gets produced for a very low price in the north, in the south the lowest possible price is much higher and thus gets picked as the baseline. The dream of our government is a ‘copper plate’ where the electricity produced on offshore parks and solar plants in the north can get transported to and used in the south. However thats obviously not the case. In my opinion we should allow regional prices, to incentivise the south to build more cheap energy to be able to compete.
There’s a joke that the fault is Bavaria/the CSU.
The fact is it’s *mostly* the fault of Bavaria and the CSU.
Give us price regions and see if Bavaria still wants to pretend Wind turbines are ugly.
Mostly because of grid costs. The grid is currently underbuild which actually leads to more costs.
And on top of that the grid provide have a ROE of around 40% which is crazy high when you consider that those are monopolies and the earnings are guaranteed.
It’s complicated. Firstly, the price mentioned in the article is that basic contract electricity providers have to offer any household. So in part it contains non-paying customers in the price. Turning of power to a household is a hard undertaking for a provider.
People if decent credit, can switch their provider or into a better price from the base provider in their region. Depending on region you pay between 28 – 32 ct/kWh. But especially older Germans don’t really switch.
Then there is the industrial electricity price which gets quite few exemptions from certain cost. For this price Germany sits in the middle of the pack in the European Union. Which puts the cost of switching to renewables mostly on private households.
Lastly you have the merit order principle. Which means the current price is that of the highest electricity producing source. Which right now is almost always natural gas, sometimes the slightly cheaper coal. That means even if 80% is produced via cheap renewable 19% of coal and 1% out of gas. The cost for everyone is going to be the gas price.
(Cost goes, renewables, then nuclear power, then coal, then gas).
So, there you have it, as long as there is some burning of stuff involved prices will be relatively high.
Comparing the cost to other European countries, factoring in the average salary of the countries it’s not that expensive in comparison. Furthermore, if you take the inflation into account the electricity prices haven’t really gone up since 2021, even down if you will. I recently switched contracts and I am paying 25ct/ kWh.
Taxes
monopolized infrastructure.
F.e. my electricity is 0.08 kWh
But I pay extra for the infrastructure, taxes, etc 0.2086/kWh
Plus there is monthly fee of 17.13/month.
The electricity prices are determined by the most expensive form. Meaning the cheap renewable energy is sold for the same price as the expensive coal electricity.
I don’t like this system but that’s what it is…
The lobbies ensuring the gas and coal plants stay open so prices stay high, and government doesn’t care because high price = higher tax revenue? Sounds about right.
Lobbyism and taxes
Because very rich people want to increase their wealth even faster than before.
coz