It was originally the idea of the Institute for Economic Research (Wifo): Austrian electricity customers should get a quota at a price that roughly corresponds to the consumption of an average household. Specifically, it has now become 2900 kilowatt hours at ten cents. Those who consume more should pay the market price.
Experts, including those of Wifo, are surprised that this model does not even take household size into account. In their paper “Economic policy options for curbing energy prices using the example of electricity”, the economic researchers described taking household size into account as “essential” for increasing social accuracy.
The Wifo economist and co-author of the study Michael Böheim sees no insurmountable hurdles. Linking metering point data from the electricity supplier to the Central Register of Residents (ZMR) would have been sufficient. “The legislature should actually be able to clear the corresponding legal hurdles,” says Böheim. The technical challenges can also be mastered with a bit of advance notice, provided that the will is there. This is also because, according to Finance Minister Magnus Brunner, this electricity price subsidy will cost up to four billion euros and the measure should run until mid-2024, so there is enough time to adapt the plans accordingly.
It was also criticized that the income of the electricity consumer is also irrelevant and that financially well-off households, for example for a second home, are funded just as much as single-earner households with several children. No matter how hard you try to develop a socially accurate model, there is a risk that on the one hand people who do not need it will receive the support and on the other hand the needy will fall through the grate. “You can’t minimize both errors at the same time,” says Böheim. But under-funding is clearly the greater evil in the case of the electricity price brake, so over-funding has to be accepted to a certain extent. “The perfect funding program only exists in theory,” says Böheim.
Franz Kehrer, Caritas director in Upper Austria, describes the measure as a “first important step”, but also complains that social accuracy is not given.
Kehrer therefore sees the electricity price brake only as a first step, because heating costs could become the bigger problem in winter. Measures have been announced by the government, but so far nothing is known about them. The heating season has already started. Kehrer could imagine bringing forward the valorisation of social benefits planned for January 2023 so that money reaches the poorest households as quickly as possible.
In a series of e-mails to the OÖN editors, the situation of heat pump owners is also pointed out. They need significantly more electricity than the 2900 kilowatt hours that will be subsidized from December. It is currently still unclear whether heat pump electricity will be taken into account in the announced reduction in heating costs.
Source: Nachrichten
