The debate about a subsidized industrial electricity price will not end for the time being. Chancellor Scholz has made his rejection clear. The SPD parliamentary group does not want to give up just yet.
Despite resistance in the federal government, the SPD parliamentary group wants to continue to advocate a subsidized industrial electricity price. “From our point of view, the industrial electricity price is of elementary importance. We need secure and affordable energy for companies that are in difficult competitive situations, especially with nearby non-European countries,” said parliamentary group leader Dirk Wiese to the newspapers of the Bayern media group.
Chancellor Olaf Scholz from the SPD made his rejection clear on Wednesday: “We cannot afford a debt-financed flash in the pan that will fuel inflation again, or a long-term subsidy of electricity prices with the watering can and will therefore not exist. That would be economically wrong, fiscally unsound and would certainly set the wrong incentives,” said Scholz in Düsseldorf.
Wiese, on the other hand, considers the industrial electricity price to be “very central” for Germany as an industrial and business location in the transitional period, when there are not yet enough renewable energies available. “Now many companies are asking themselves the question of where to make the next investments and at which location. We are in fierce competition with other countries, especially the United States. Energy-intensive industry needs the industrial electricity price,” added the SPD politician added. The FDP should also recognize this. “We as the SPD will not give up.”
Wiese described the industrial electricity price of six cents per kilowatt hour proposed by Economics Minister Robert Habeck (Greens) as a “realistic corridor”.
Source: Stern
