Electricity price: proposal from the industry

Siempelkamp calls for a temporary solution for the increased electricity costs caused by the elimination of the Spitzenausgleich electricity tax relief scheme for German industry. The company is proposing that the state temporarily covers the additional costs before reclaiming them when electricity prices are lower in the future.

“As things stand, every business involved in the transformation from fossil fuels to electricity is penalised with significantly higher costs, because electricity costs considerably more – and the elimination of the Spitzenausgleich tax relief scheme only exacerbates this situation,” says Dirk Howe, managing director and spokesman for the foundry business Siempelkamp Giesserei.

His proposal is for the state to grant a capped industrial electricity price to companies that consume a significant amount of energy. This would currently be set at a lower level, then would be repaid at a later date – a general CfD (contract for difference) that would provide certainty for all parties involved and enable investments to be made. “Especially when almost €13 billion in subsidies are issued to just three individual companies – Intel, thyssenkrupp and Salzgitter – it is worth considering how many hundreds of small and medium-sized companies from Germany’s Mittelstand sector with thousands upon thousands of employees could have been assisted in the ongoing transformation with the same sum of money,” Howe adds.