Don’t think about autumn. We’re talking about 2023,” according to his assessment in the “press”. And he made it clear: “The board of directors of a stock corporation will only make this decision when there is a legal basis that secures us economically.”
Whether the government’s target level of 80 percent in the gas storage tanks can be achieved by autumn? “That depends entirely on what happens in the next few months. If deliveries are now massively restricted, that will have an impact on storage,” Strugl points out.
Regarding possible electricity supply bottlenecks, he said that he believed “that security of supply is also guaranteed in winter”. The prerequisite is that the gas-fired power plants continue to be connected to the grid. “They generate 15 percent of the electricity, and significantly more in winter. These power plants will also run in the case of energy steering. We have this information from the ministry. If that were different, we might soon have an electricity crisis,” said Strugl.
And what about energy prices? “We currently have price shocks that we have to deal with. In the case of electricity, the futures markets will also show a very high level in the next few years, which we have not had until now,” calculated the Verbund boss.
Strugl put it into perspective that the association is doing well on the income side: “Of the higher revenue, what we report as a profit, we pay higher taxes and a higher dividend. Including the special dividend, we are paying around 1.2 for the current financial year Billions of euros to the owners. We then reinvest what remains. We invest one billion euros a year in the expansion of generation, grids and storage. If you take away these profits from the companies, you take away the opportunity for them to invest.”
Source: Nachrichten
